It's more like, hey, this stuff burns and we don't have to wring out a whale to get it!

we are addicted to foreign ichor of dead gods

Real and straight.

iirc charcoal (coal made from wood) was used first, then stonecoal, then oil

so it was a continuous transition. they didn't just wake up one day and started digging

It's all a spectrum. You start with pure light from the sun and air making sugar in plants, then the sugar is condensed into plant fiber then the plant fiber is squished into the ground for millions of years and the carbon in the fiber is squeezed into pure carbon, and you get pure dark beautiful dry coal. Then you take ground up dinosaur guts and throw them in a pit and you get gross mixed crude oil with everything in it. But it's all just carbon.

Oil is sentient.