Officials believe a cargo ship may be responsible for the oil spill off the coast of California that has devastated beaches and wildlife.
Investigators have discovered that damage to the underwater oil pipeline may have occurred months before the spill when a 1,200-foot cargo ship, the MSC DANIT, allegedly caught the line with its anchor, knocking a concrete casing off the pipe and pulling it for more than 100 feet.
The anchor would have bent, but not broke the line, Coast Guard SondraKey Kneen said. It is still undetermined whether the impact caused the eventual leak in October, or if the line was hit by another object at a later date. Investigators have also not ruled out the possibility that the pipeline failed due to a preexisting problem.
"We’re still looking at multiple vessels and scenarios," Kneen said.
The DANIT’s operator, MSC Mediterranean Shipping Company headquartered in Switzerland, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The oil spill, first detected on Oct. 2 off the coast of Huntington Beach, is estimated to have released about 25,000 gallons of crude into the water, killing wildlife in the area.
While not as bad as environmentalists initially feared, the spill has reignited the debate over offshore drilling in federal waters in the Pacific.
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