"You've exceeded the good Colonel's record by 79 feet."
Seeping oil is no recent phenominun. Back in the late 1800's oil threatened water holes in Oklahoma and Texas where cattlemen watered their herds.
There are a lot of oil seeps. That was one of the ways early wildcatters looked for oil, along with "creekology".
And in North Africa during WWII both the Germans and the Brits would dig wells for their use after which when that location was captured by the other side, oil would have seeped into it. Both sides accused the other of "poisoning" the wells with petroleum so they could not use it. Little did they know that Libya sat on one of the largest oil fields in the world.
But seeps go back to antiquity. It's where the Greeks got pitch to waterproof their ships. And Herodotus reported a small cave where a continuous fire came out of. It was a natural gas seep that was lit.