[jandrewrogers]

Per NOAA and USGS, ~20 million liters of crude oil naturally seeps into that part of the California ocean each year. That is more crude oil each year than the worst oil spill in California history[0].

You are projecting your biases. There was no "drilling is good for the environment" narrative. I was recounting an interesting fact about the environment there.

Many of these seeps are under considerable pressure as there is substantial natural gas mixed in. The seepage rate of each has been mapped and studied for many decades. It has long been observed that the introduction of drilling appears to substantially reduced the seepage rate at many of these underwater sites. Drilling wells significantly reduces natural pressure in these reservoirs, likely leading to the observed reductions in seepage.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1969_Santa_Barbara_oil_spill

[Merovius]

> There was no "drilling is good for the environment" narrative.

…

> Oil drilling actually made the water cleaner.

[jandrewrogers]

For it to be a "narrative", there would need to be an additional claim that this specific case and context, which is factual, generalizes to most unrelated cases. That is not in evidence. Thinking that this was an attempt to create a narrative is a failure of reading comprehension.

This insistence that acknowledgement of facts has an ideological narrative is a pernicious strain of anti-science thinking.