Have any large naturally-occurring oil leakage events happened?

[Silent3]

Perhaps not during recorded human history, but over geologic time scales?

I'm wondering if anyone has ever found, or at least tried looking for, geological evidence of a major naturally-occurring oil eruption, such as a seismic event opening up a large undersea oil reservoir.

Such a scenario at least seems plausible to me, and it might be instructive if we could look into the geological/paleontological record to see how life on the planet responded to what, if it occurred, would likely be far worse event than the already-bad-enough BP spill.

Apparently a fair amount of natural oil leakage into the oceans is occurring all of the time, and that amount is typically greater in total quantity than what human activity spills into the oceans, but this "background" natural leakage is slow and broadly dispersed, not horrifically concentrated like a ruptured oil well.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

1. Good question, I don't know.

I don't know if such an event would leave lasting geological evidence for us to observe.

[glowing]

2. What happened in 1979 to clean up that mess.. the leak that spewed for 9 mos.

[slackmaster]

5. People cleaned up what they could, and let nature handle the rest

There has been petroleum for maybe hundreds of millions of years. There are bacteria that eat the stuff.

[izquierdista]

7. The Mexican way

They take that approach to wildfires as well.

[slackmaster]

8. If it's on fire, let it burn

If it's not on fire, pour gasoline over it and set it on fire.

[slackmaster]

3. I assume that it must have happened - Slow leaks happen a lot

So much oil in so many places, there must have been large spills at times.

The beaches near the Santa Barbara channel have always had some tar balls on them.

[mattvermont]

4. Le brea tar pits?

[Ganja Ninja]

18. I don't know how large they are but ...

that's what I expect they would look like.

[izquierdista]

6. Probably not

Oil is fairly reactive and it oxides easily in the atmosphere. There are not great deposits of oil sitting on the surface of the earth; there are a lot more dry lake beds where you can find salt than places like the Rancho La Brea tar pits in Los Angeles. The Santa Barbara channel is well known for oil seepage, but that place has lots and lots of fault lines for oil under pressure to ooze up through.

One of the keys to the formation of coal, oil, and gas deposits is an anaerobic environment where organic sediments can collect and turn into hydrocarbon faster than anaerobic bacteria can degrade them. Once that geology is exposed back to the atmosphere, there are many ways to oxidize those hydrocarbons.

[A HERETIC I AM]

14. You've never been to Texas, have you? n/t

[izquierdista]

19. You've never been right, have you? n/t

[Silent3]

15. I'm not talking about exposed to air, but to water.

What I'm suggesting is exactly the same kind of oil reservoir that the BP rig had drilled into, combined with a seismic event that would crack open that reservoir allowing it to gush from the ocean floor into the water above, with nothing to stop a very large quantity of oil escaping.

[DefenseLawyer]

9. The closest would be Jed Clampett shootin' at some food.

[Arugula Latte]

12. Good point. After all, out from the ground came bubblin' crude.

Black Gold.
Texas Tea.



:rofl:

[csziggy]

10. Google "tar pits" or "asphalt pits" - some of those across the world, including La Brea in LA

Wikipedia has a pretty good article with links to some of the tar pits: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tar_pit

[Silent3]

17. That's on land, and slow seepage.

What I'm speculating about would be something similar, but with an undersea oil deposit, and a more sudden release caused by seismic activity.

[MyNameGoesHere]

11. Did some googling

and found this article. It's TPM so I do not know how factual it is. It cites some academies and so forth. I read the whole thing and yes lots of oil does "seep" every year but it seems to get "eaten" up fairly quick by natural occurring events.

[Silent3]

16. I'd found a bit of the same material...

...but no references yet to anything that's both natural and on a sudden catastrophic scale. I don't know if the lack of information on what I'm speculating about means it hasn't ever happened, or simply that it hasn't been studied much or discovered yet.

[Arugula Latte]

13. I know that the beach in Santa Barbara, Calif. always has tar balls

from a natural leak, but it's not on this scale, obviously.