California Gov. Gavin Newsom has proclaimed a state of emergency in Orange County in response to the massive oil spill this past weekend.
Newsom has directed state agencies "to undertake immediate and aggressive action to clean up and mitigate the effects" of the spill.
The response to the disaster has raised some questions about how quickly Amplify Energy, the company operating three offshore platforms and the pipeline, recognized it had a problem and notified authorities.
Investigators are looking into whether a ship’s anchor may have struck a pipeline on the ocean floor, Coast Guard officials said Monday.
"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 Lt. Cmdr. Jeannie Shaye said.
Shaye said the Coast Guard was not notified of the disaster until Saturday morning, though records show its hazardous spill response hotline received the first report of a possible oil slick Friday evening.
A foreign ship anchored off the coast witnessed an "unknown sheen in the water near their vessel" at 6:13 p.m. and the report was called into the response center just after 8:22 p.m., according to the state report.
Lonnie Harrison Jr., vice president of Colonial Compliance Systems Inc., which works with foreign ships in U.S. waters to report spills, said one its clients reported the sighting.
Harrison, a retired Coast Guard captain, said the ship was not involved in the spill and was later given clearance over the weekend to enter the port to refuel after determining it wasn’t contaminated by the slick.
About six hours after the first report was received, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported that satellite imagery spotted a possible oil slick more than 3 miles long. The report by the National Response Center said the image of a "possible oil anomaly" was probably associated with the first report.
"Although there were numerous vessels within immediate proximity to the anomaly, none were clearly associated with the anomaly," the report said. "These factors prevented the possible identification of a point source. Still, the NRC report allows for high confidence that this was oil."
The company that operates the pipeline first reported the spill to the Coast Guard’s response center at 8:55 a.m. Saturday. However, the report said the incident occurred at 2:30 a.m.
Federal and state authorities require rapid reporting of a spill. Failure to do so led to criminal prosecutions against Plains All American Pipeline, which caused a coastal spill near Santa Barbara in 2015, and Southern California Gas Co. for a massive well blowout later that year.
A 2016 spill response plan for the Amplify platforms submitted to federal regulators called for immediate notification of federal officials when more than one barrel of oil is released into the water. Releases greater than five barrels — or that threaten state waters or the shoreline — require immediate notification of the state fire marshal and California wildlife officials.
The pipeline was supposed to be monitored under an automated leak detection system that would report problems to a control room staffed around the clock on the oil platform known as Elly.
The system was designed to trigger an alarm whenever a change in the flow of oil is detected. But how fast it can pick up on those changes was expected to vary according to the size of the leak. For a large leak — 10% or more of the amount of oil flowing through the pipeline — the detection time was estimated at 5 minutes. Smaller leaks were expected to take up to 50 minutes to detect, according to the response plan.
The spill plan warned that a break in the pipeline could cause "substantial harm to the environment" and that in a worst-case scenario 3,111 barrels of oil could be released from the pipeline.
Willsher said required agencies were notified "instantly" when the company recognized the leak was from its pipe. Records show the spill was not reported by Amplify Energy, but by Witt O’Brien’s, a crisis and emergency management firm listed on the spill response plan as the point of contact to notify the NRC.
The report said the leaking pipe had been shut off but containment was not confirmed. The cause of the rupture was unknown.
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