I got sucked into spending quite a while reading about that stuff after seeing a link to Gold on HN. He was an interesting guy. Since he died in 2004 some of his ideas, like a lot of life in the crust seem to have proven correct. Others - that most oil and gas has a primordial origin, not from life seem mostly wrong. There are definitely primordial hydrocarbons - Titan has seas of methane. However on the inner planets a lot evaporated and the majority of our fossil fuels seem of biological origin.

There's a maybe better (very good) article on life in the crust from the NYT june 2024 here https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/24/magazine/earth-geomicrobi... . Top comment "This article is one of the most powerful articles I have ever read in the NYT. I am so grateful that the author wrote it. It cemented my belief that that all life is deeply connected from the beginning to the present day and beyond..."