I'm not sure what you're arguing for here.
Clearly there are at least three different processes, because they create three different outcomes: coal, gas and oil. They may all three be produced from biological matter (Western theory), or all three from methane (USSR theory), or some types may be produced from biological matter and some other types from methane. Maybe even some types could be produced from both origins, although the prior is low and it's true in this case you would expect a majority to come from one process.
We observe comparable (in orders of magnitude) amounts of fuel of all three types. This is something any theory must account for. It might be evidence for a similar origin for all three fuel types (e.g. due to constraints on how much source matter was available to convert into fuel). But I don't see how it's evidence for one kind of origin over another.
I meant for each individual type. I don't know if there's any particular reason to believe all three kinds of fuels were from the same process.
I suppose the fact that they all have comparable amounts of fuel is some evidence, but it's not as strong, since I don't think we would particularly expect comparable amounts of fuel even if they did have the same source.
What can we learn about science from the divide during the Cold War?
I have one example in mind: America held that coal and oil were fossil fuels, the stored energy of the sun, while the Soviets held that they were the result of geologic forces applied to primordial methane.
At least one side is thoroughly wrong. This isn't a politically charged topic like sociology, or even biology, but a physical science where people are supposed to agree on the answers. This isn't a matter of research priorities, where one side doesn't care enough to figure things out, but a topic that both sides saw to be of great importance, and where they both claimed to apply their theories. On the other hand, Lysenkoism seems to have resulted from the practical importance of crop breeding.
First of all, this example supports the claim that there really was a divide, that science was disconnected into two poorly communicating camps. It suggests that when the two sides reached the same results on other topics, they did so independently. Even if we cannot learn from this example, it suggests that we may be able to learn from other consequences of dividing the scientific community.
My understanding is that although some Russian language research papers were available in America, they were completely ignored and the scientists failed to even acknowledge that there was a community with divergent opinions. I don't know about the other direction.
Some questions: