Coast Guard: Natural seepage caused oil sheen off Huntington Beach
A two-mile long oil sheen spotted offshore of Huntington Beach near oil rigs was caused by natural seepage, not by a spill related to oil operations, according to the United States Coast Guard.
The sheen prompted quick response from the United Command, a group of several agencies that combine efforts to contain oil off the coast, formed following the
2021 oil spill in the same area that reached shore and impacted everything from beach access to businesses along the coastline.
Test results came back from the Office of Spill Prevention and Response – part of the Department of Fish and Wildlife – indicating the natural oil source, said Richard Uranga, US Coast Guard public affairs specialist.
“From the first initial stages, they were tracking that from the samples,” he said. “The oil rig samples were not the same as the oil that was gathered from the oil sheen.”
The Coast Guard received a report about 7 p.m. on March 7 from the National Response Center about the sheen on the ocean’s surface off Huntington Beach’s coast. It was first spotted about 2.8 miles off Huntington Beach near two oil platforms, Emmy and Eva. It was visually confirmed at first light the next day and containment efforts began.
Operations are now complete, currently in the “decontamination phase” cleaning booms and boats, Uranga said.
Natural seepage can happen for many reasons, such as tectonic plate shifts, but it’s unclear why the large amount showed up on the sea’s surface, Uranga said.
“There’s no outlier or determination of what causes the seepage or discharge,” he said.
“Normally, tar balls are common in Southern California waters, but not as much as this. We know the origin, it was natural seepage. But what caused so much natural seepage, we don’t know.”
According to the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration, crude oil entering the ocean is known as “seeps” and add about five million gallons of oil into the ocean each year.
While seeps are from a natural source, they can appear similar in appearance and behavior and have similar effects as oil released during drilling and other human activities.
“Seeps are areas where oil and natural gas naturally leak out of the ground through fractures and sediments, in the same way freshwater springs bring water to the surface,” according to NOAA’S website. “The waters off Southern California host hundreds of known, naturally occurring oil and gas seeps,with more documented on land.”
Oil from seeps has been found to be toxic to fish, sea stars and shrimp, with the toxic effects largely limited to the immediate area of the release. More than 1,000 birds each year are oiled in Southern and Central California, primarily due to natural seeps, according to NOAA.
In this latest incident, two oiled birds died and several more were brought in for observation and cleaning, officials said. Tar balls washed ashore in the areas of Huntington Beach’s Dog Beach.
Waste disposal company US Ecology was contracted for the cleanup by the Coast Guard, with an estimated 150 pounds of oil waste, such as tar balls, collected and disposed of and 85 gallons of oil was collected from the water, Uranga said.