Some oil from California spill breaking up in ocean currents
LONG BEACH, Calif. — Some of the crude oil that spilled from a pipeline into the waters off Southern California has been breaking up naturally in ocean currents, a Coast Guard official said Wednesday as authorities sought to determine the scope of the damage.
Coast Guard Petty Officer Steve Strohmaier said some of the oil has been pushed to the south by currents. Storms earlier in the week may also have helped disperse the oil, which he said could make it more challenging to skim as it spreads out.
“Most of this oil is separating and starting to float further south,” he said while accompanying reporters aboard a boat to the scene of the spill. “The biggest problem is the uncertainty, the amount that leaked into the water. We are at this point unsure of the total amount that leaked out.”
The pipeline operator, Amplify Energy Corp., has publicly pegged the maximum amount of the spill at 126,000 gallons of heavy crude. But the company told federal investigators with the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration that initial measurements put the total only around 29,400 gallons.
The water and shoreline are still off limits in Huntington Beach and several other areas, but people are allowed on the sand. Beachgoers played volleyball on the Huntington Beach sand Wednesday morning as walkers and bikers passed near the city’s famed pier. A few globs of oil were visible along the shoreline but no smell remained.
Investigators have said the spill may have been caused by a ship’s anchor that hooked, dragged and tore open an underwater pipeline. Federal officials also found that the pipeline owner did not quickly shut down operations after a safety system alerted to a possible spill.
Questions remained about the timeline of the weekend spill, which fouled beaches and a protected marshland, potentially closing them for weeks along with commercial and recreational fishing in a major hit to the local economy.
Some reports of a possible spill, a petroleum smell and an oily sheen on the waters off Huntington Beach came in Friday night but weren’t corroborated and the pipeline’s operator, Amplify Energy Corp., didn’t report a spill until the next morning, authorities said.
An alarm went off in a company control room at 2:30 a.m. Saturday that pressure had dropped in the pipeline, indicating a possible leak, but Amplify waited until 6:01 a.m. to shut down the pipeline, according to preliminary findings of an investigation into the spill.
The Houston-based company took another three hours to notify the U.S. Coast Guard’s National Response Center for oil spills, investigators said, further slowing the response to an accident for which Amplify workers spent years preparing.
However, Amplify CEO Martyn Willsher insisted that the company wasn’t aware of the spill until it saw a sheen on the water at 8:09 a.m.
The company’s spill-response plan calls for the immediate notification of a spill. Criminal charges have been brought in the past when a company took too long to notify federal and state officials of a spill.
On Tuesday, federal transportation investigators said the pipe was split open at a depth of about 98 feet and a nearly milelong section was pulled along the sea floor, possibly by an anchor that hooked it and caused a partial tear, federal transportation investigators said.
“The pipeline has essentially been pulled like a bow string,” Mr. Willsher said. “At its widest point, it is 105 feet away from where it was.”
Huge cargo ships regularly cross above the pipeline as they head into the gigantic Los Angeles-Long Beach port complex. They are given coordinates where they are to anchor until unloading.
Anchored cargo ships continually move because of shifting winds and tides, and an improperly set anchor weighing 10 tons or more can drag “whatever the anchor gets fouled on,” said Steven Browne, a professor of marine transportation at California State University Maritime Academy.