The truth is oil is a natural part of our oceans. In the Gulf of Mexico alone, over 5,000 barrels of oil a day (220,000 gallons a day, over 80 million gallons a year!)seeps out from vents in the earth into the ocean. It’s part of the natural cycle, but few will speak of this truth today. Oil is a natural substance. It’s part of the earth, and obviously ocean life continues every year despite over two million barrels of oil escaping in the Gulf of Mexico alone—a very small body of water compared to the Oceans, which experience the same phenomenon.
The largest problem within the Santa Barbara [California] channel is not drilling, but natural oil seepage. Oil and gas trapped in the Monterey Shale below the ocean floor seep up through fissures. It has been estimated that there are two billion barrels alone under an area known as the Coal Point Seeps.
A recent study by University of California at Santa Barbara professors Bruce Luyendyk, Ira Leifer and J. R. Boles estimates that natural seepage amounts to 10,000 gallons of oil and 3.5 million cubic feet of natural gas a day(nearly 1.3 billion cubic feet a year -- enough for 14,000 homes). That means about every three years there is the equivalent of a natural Exxon Valdez spill plus the natural emission of hundreds of millions of cubic feet of methane, a global warming gas much more powerful than CO2. (And that's just off the California coast!) The solution to stop this natural seepage is drilling and energy recovery to relieve the pressure under these underground fissures where the seepage occurs, which would have the additional benefit of reducing our dependence on foreign oil.