There are a plethora of reasons to discount this possibility.

1) life incorporates hydrocarbons. Hydrocarbons present on the earth would get exposed to the surface over time and get devoured by living creatures

2) the presence of oxygen would cause them to oxidize into carbon dioxide and water over time. You'll note, in all the hydrocarbon rich planets out there they all have simple hydrocarbons, alkanes basically, the hydrocsrbons not produced or replenished, just present, and they all lack oxygen

3) the amount of energy hydrocarbons contain has to come from somewhere. The only thing we know of that traps sunlight in hydrocarbons is life.

It is pretty obvious what hydrocarbons are: biomass that has been sequestered by geological processes. I personally have no problem replenishing that sequestered biomass back into the biosphere, and I think there is probably a lot more of it than we think.