California oil leak may have been caused by SHIP’S ANCHOR striking pipeline, officials say

The mystery behind what caused the 126,000-gallon oil spill off the California coast over the weekend may have finally been solved, officials revealed Monday.

Investigators believe that a ship’s anchor may have been to blame for the disaster off the coast of Orange County, after accidentally striking a 17½-mile submarine pipeline on the ocean floor.

The head of the company that operates the pipeline announced Monday during a press conference about the company’s response to the incident that divers have examined more than a mile of the compromised conduit, and have now honed in on ‘one area of significant interest.’

Amplify Energy CEO Martyn Willsher emphasized that a rogue anchor striking the pipeline is ‘one of the distinct possibilities’ for the cause of the leak, as a multitude of cargo ships that enter the US’s two most popular ports, that of Los Angeles and Long Beach, commonly pass through the area.

‘We’re looking into if it could have been an anchor from a ship, but that’s in the assessment phase right now,’ Coast Guard Lieutenant Commander Jeannie Shaye of Coast Guard announced at the press conference at Bolsa Chica State Park.

Willsher announced Sunday that the leak has since been stopped, but not before his company’s share price took a drastic hit.

As of Monday, Amplify shares plummeted by more than 50 per cent, from $5.75 per share to $2.85 a share as stock markets opened, amid fury over the environmental catastrophe.

Its share price had climbed to $3.23 per share as of 5:10pm, but that was still down 43.87 percent on Friday’s close.

Willsher, who oversees the operations of Houston-based oil company Amplify Energy Corp., said Sunday that his company’s underwater pipeline that sprung the leak had been ‘suctioned at both ends’ sometime over the weekend. That means no more oil would spill out into the already contaminated Pacific, and shores of a 13 mile stretch of coastline encompassing Huntington Beach as well as Newport Beach.

The oil it did leak – equivalent to 3,000 barrels – represented the entire capacity of the pipeline, which is attached to an oil processing platform called Elly.

Investors are no doubt spooked by the prospect of lawsuits, with Huntington Beach Mayor Kim Carr vowing to hold the oil firm ‘accountable.’ The spillage – believed to have begun on Friday – canceled the second day of the popular Pacific Air Show, which attracted more than one million visitors on Saturday, with local businesses also likely to make claims for compensation.

What’s more, the company that operates the pipeline – Beta Offshore, a Long Beach-based offshoot of Amplify – has been cited 72 times for safety and environmental violations severe enough to cause drilling operations to have to be ceased to address, regulatory records reveal.

In all, Beta Operating Co. has been cited 125 times since 1980, according to a database from the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, the federal agency that regulates the offshore oil and gas industry.

However, the online database provides only the total number of violations, not the details for each incident.

The company was fined a total of $85,000 for three incidents. Two were from 2014, when a worker who was not wearing proper protective equipment was shocked with 98,000 volts of electricity, and a separate incident when crude oil was released through a boom where a safety device had been improperly bypassed.

Willsher announced Sunday that the company is investigating the spill, first asserting that divers were likely to blame for the leak, adding that the pipeline – built in the late 70s and early 80s – has undergone maintenance and has been ‘meticulously maintained’ every year since, even during the COVID pandemic.

‘Everything is shut down,’ Willsher said. ‘Our employees live and work in these communities, and we’re all deeply impacted and concerned about the impact,’ the executive added.

‘We will do everything in our power to ensure that this is recovered as quickly as possible.’

The pipeline in question  sits 80 to 100 feet below the sea’s surface, and was linked to three offshore platforms – two of which pumped the oil before it was processed by Elly.

The leak – which likely sprung late Friday night – left a slew of beaches in the Orange County area badly contaminated, with locals banned from taking to the waters.

Huntington Beach Mayor Kim Carr said Saturday that the beaches of the community nicknamed ‘Surf City’ could remain closed for months, and hinted that her office is investigating ways to hold the oil company accountable.

‘In a year that has been filled with incredibly challenging issues, this oil spill constitutes one of the most devastating situations that our community has dealt with in decades,’ Carr said.

‘In the coming days and weeks we challenge the responsible parties to do everything possible to rectify this environmental catastrophe.’

Carr added: ‘We are doing everything in our power to protect the health and safety of our residents, our visitors and our natural habitats.’

However, oil still ‘infiltrated’ and contaminated Talbert Marsh, a wetland situated on the Orange County coast, home to many bird species.

The county is building a ‘sand berm’ barrier to keep the oil from intruding further, Orange County Supervisor Katrina Foley said on Sunday.

Other areas effected include the Santa Ana River Trail and the Bolsa Chica Ecological Reserve – also rich with wildlife.

Foley added that hordes of dead birds and fish have washed ashore along the county’s coast.

The coast is a renowned habitat for threatened and endangered species as well, including humpback whales and a small wading bird called the snowy plover.

‘The coastal areas off of Southern California are just really rich for wildlife, a key biodiversity hot spot,’ Miyoko Sakashita, director of the Center for Biological Diversity’s oceans program, told the Press.

Birds that get oil on their feathers will not be able to fly, hindering them from going out and finding food, Sakashita said, adding that they will also be left unable to properly clean themselves or regulate their own body temperatures.

Whales, dolphins and other sea creatures, on the other hand, risk dying swimming through oil-tainted water or by breathing in toxic fumes.

‘The oil spill just shows how dirty and dangerous oil drilling is and oil that gets into the water. It’s impossible to clean it up so it ends up washing up on our beaches and people come into contact with it and wildlife comes in contact with it,’ she told the outlet.

‘It has long-lasting effects on the breeding and reproduction of animals.’

Authorities are adamant that the oil came from Platform Elly.

The 13-square-mile slick has since spread all across the Orange County coast, including to Newport Beach to the south – and, according to officials, will likely continue to do so.

Some residents and environmentalists, however, questioned whether authorities reacted quickly enough to contain one of the largest oil spills in recent California history.

Measures were not taken to stop the spread from reaching the area’s multitude of beaches and coastal areas until at least a day after the leak was allegedly first detected.

People who live in the area reported Friday evening that they noticed a foul petroleum odor emanating from off the coast, as well as a stark oil-like sheen coming from the water’s surface.

But it wasn’t until Saturday afternoon that the Coast Guard was mobilized after the oil slick had been spotted.

It was not until Saturday night that Amplify decided to finally shut down operations.

Rick Torgerson, owner of a local yacht charter service based in Newport Beach, said Friday that ‘people were emailing’ him enquiring about the smell and the strange sheen, while a multitude of neighbors enquired, ‘Do you smell that?’ referring to the foul odor.

The Orange County business owner added that as early as Saturday morning, boats were returning to the marina with their hulls completely covered in oil.

Garry Brown, president of the environmental group Orange County Coastkeeper, criticized the lack of coordination among the Coast Guard and local officials in dealing with the spread in a manner befitting of such a crisis.

‘By the time it comes to the beach, it’s done tremendous damage,’ he told The Press.

‘Our frustration,’ reasoned Brown, a resident of Huntington Beach, ‘is, it could have been averted if there was a quick response.’

Booms were not deployed until Sunday to stop the resulting slick to spread to the county’s beaches.

A warning was issued to Orange County residents by the state Department of Fish and Wildlife, to not eat any fish and shellfish taken from 20 miles of shoreline, from Huntington Beach to Dana Point – labeling the fish a ‘threat to public health.’

U.S. Representative Michelle Steel, a Republican representing part of the affected area, sent a letter to Democratic President Joe Biden requesting a major disaster declaration for Orange County, which would free up federal funds to help with the clean-up efforts, as the spill occurred in federal waters

In a statement, the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE), a division of the Interior Department, said it was supporting response efforts headed by the U.S. Coast Guard.

The bureau said its role was to ‘assist in identifying the location and source of any spills and provide technical assistance in stopping the spillage.’

The Coast Guard has recovered 3,150 gallons of oil from the water and deployed 5,360 feet of skimmers and floating barriers known as booms to try to stop further incursion into the wetlands and the Bolsa Chica Ecological Reserve.

The spill, the fifth-largest in California history, comes three decades after a massive oil leak hit the same stretch of Orange County coast. On Feb. 7, 1990, an oil tanker accidentally ran over its own anchor off Huntington Beach, spilling nearly 417,000 gallons of oil, killing more than 3,000 birds and countless fish.

In 2015, a ruptured pipeline north of Santa Barbara spurted 143,000 gallons of crude oil onto Refugio State Beach.

In 1971, 800,000 gallons of bunker fuel spilled in San Francisco Bay, leaving a similarly devastating impact on the area’s wildlife.

 In 1969, a blowout of a Union Oil drilling rig platform off the coast of Santa Barbara resulted in a spill of 4.2 million gallons of crude oil into the Pacific and onto nearby shores.