I remember, when I was a kid, we had a veggy tray from an old fridge that we used for draining the oil from the engine when we changed oil. One time we had some oil in it out in the back yard and I decided to see if it would burn, so I wadded up a sheet of newspaper and lit it, and tossed it in the pan. Well nothing much happened at first, the paper just acted as a candle wick, and kept burning. But the oil started getting hotter and finally started burning too. The flames started getting bigger, so I decided it was time to put the fire out. So I turned the water hose on the pan. WHOA-HO-HO! Big mistake! The flames shot up ten or fifteen feet! What a conflagration! The water hit the boiling oil and turned to steam, and that was like blowing air on the oil. Nice way to get scalded and burned. So I learned a lesson: never put water on burning oil. Later I learned that it doesn't work with magnesium, too. :-P
So here's some kindling for the fire.