Crude oil like this blob of petroleum washes up on the beach at Coal Oil Point near Santa Barbara, California. It comes from natural seepage offshore. The undersea rocks along Santa Barbara Channel are a textbook example of petroleum formation. First, huge thicknesses of coarse sediment are laid down from the erosion of the rapidly uplifting Santa Ynez Mountains; at the same time, the waters of the channel are tremendously fertile, raining large amounts of dead organic matter onto the sediments. The sediments become rock, and over a few hundred thousand years, more or less, the organic matter within them is slowly cooked into petroleum.
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