The company that operates a pipeline that spilled an estimated 3,000 barrels of oil into the Pacific Ocean off California has an 800-page manual on handling an oil spill — but it is unclear whether its employees followed those procedures.
Houston-based Amplify Energy Corp and several state and US federal regulatory agencies have provided differing accounts of what happened on Oct. 2, when the pipeline spill that fouled beaches, killed wildlife and closed down fishing along kilometers of coastline was officially reported.
The US Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) said that Beta Offshore, an Amplify subsidiary that operates the pipeline, received a low-pressure warning in its control room about 2:30am on Oct. 2, a sign of a rupture in the line.
Photo: AP
The leak-detection alarm should have triggered rapid telephone calls to managers, boat crews, regulators and the US Coast Guard, and swiftly set in motion steps to shut down the pipeline and platform that feeds it, according to 10 former and current Beta Offshore employees and contractors, as well as a copy of the company’s spill response plan reviewed by Reuters.
However, the San Pedro Bay Pipeline was not shut down until 6am, about three and a half hours later, a PHMSA timeline showed.
Amplify CEO Martyn Willsher said that the company was not aware of the spill until mid-morning.
“We were not aware of any spills until 8:09am Pacific on Saturday morning,” he told a news conference on Wednesday.
The line was shut off at about 6am, he said, without explaining why or for how long.
“We were not pumping oil at 8:09am when we actually discovered oil on the water,” he said.
In response to a reporter’s question about the 2:30am alarm, Willsher said: “We were not aware of any alarm at 2:30.”
He also said that the company was investigating the timeline and “working with regulators to see if there was anything that should have been noticed.”
Amplify did not respond to requests for comment on this remark. The company also did not respond to several other requests for comment.
Tom Haug, a third-party contractor who is listed as an incident commander in the response plan, referred questions to Amplify’s official spokesperson.
The about 27km pipeline runs from Amplify’s Elly oil production platform offshore to Long Beach, California, where the oil is stored and transported for refining.
The spill’s volume is miniscule compared with others that have sparked regulatory change, such as the 2010 Deepwater Horizon rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico, which released more than 5 million barrels of oil into the water.
Still, it raises questions about the effectiveness of government-mandated spill response plans, which are meant to ensure companies react quickly to minimize pollution and public hazards.
The cause of the most recent spill is under investigation, with officials probing whether the rupture might have been caused by a strike from a ship’s anchor.
Investigators have discovered that a section of the pipeline had moved about 32m and had a 33cm split running parallel to the pipe.
Residents and nearby vessels first noticed foul smells and a sheen on the water on Friday evening, the US National Response Center said, the designated point of contact for environmental accidents.
However, the coast guard has said that reports of this type are common, and do not always indicate a spill.
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