Hold on, oil is a fuel. Surely any machine at all that could be fueled by crude oil could be set free in the sea and it'd help?
Crude oil is not the same as diesel fuel; heck, its not even close to bunker fuel, which is almost a leftover of the refining process. AFAIK, while you can burn crude oil, you can't power an engine with it (and you really wouldn't want to, either - the emissions alone would be pretty nasty, and it would like foul the engine before it turned many revolutions anyhow).