The guys at Vice have been working hard to expose what really flows beneath Los Angeles's seedy surface. Turns out, it's oil.

In a short film from VBS, secret oil rigs scattered throughout the city of Los Angeles are tracked down, on camera, and a bit of their history is revealed. The city of Los Angeles is built on some huge oil fields and, seeing as there's also a massive city there as well, someone had to find a way to discreetly get all that oil out. The answer was to pretty up and/or hide the rigs in plain sight, so that a casual observer isn't likely to even know they're around.

Numerous sites throughout West Hollywood and Beverly Hills are home to the rigs, some housed in inconspicuous buildings, others in painted towers and some just out in the open, in the back of malls, or in other places that aren't highly trafficked.

And while the video does seem to express some incredulity at the idea that there are so many urban oil rigs, based on comments over at The Huffington Post, a good majority of locals have been well aware of the rigs for quite some time and, for the most part, aren't concerned or impressed by their existence.