If it did, it would probably disperse untold amounts of crude oil, an environmental disaster. But would it have put out the fire, I wonder.
Nothing surprises me anymore (I hope).
Spilled oil consists of volatile and heavy elements. The volatile elements tend to evaporate, the heavy fractions eventually sink to the sea floor. (They can of course cause further damage there, as benthic damage resulting from the Deepwater Horizons spill attests.) Surface oil may also burn (as seems to be occurring here.) Some 20--40% of the mass of a slick may evaporate into the atmosphere. Some of the oil is water-soluble and will mix with the water column at depth, while 10--30% falls to or mixes with sediments on the seafloor.
Oil can also be washed onto shorlines --- beaches and rocks. Here it will mix with or coat sand and rocks. This is highly visible, but usually only a small fraction of the total spill volume. Wildlife, particularly birds, tend to be strongly and visibly affected.
At the surface, oil forms a slick. Wind and wave action tend to spread and disperse this, mixing the oil with the water column. Lighter fractions will eventually rise.
Managed responses to oil spills include skimming (booms and absorbants), burning (of concentrated oil), and dispersion (of widely-distributed oil). Skimming and burning where possible do remove the oil from the water column relatively quickly. The record on dispersants, which tend to be chemical-based agents themselves affecting sea life in the area, is more mixed. None of these methods are applicable to tropical-storm (or worse) conditions. Note that the spill in question here is far out of any possible track of Hurricane Elsa.
https://response.restoration.noaa.gov/about/media/how-do-oil...
https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/energy/a5786/oil-sp...