The Coast Guard and other agencies continue to investigate an oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. While the oil leak has been stopped, officials are trying to figure out how and where that spill happened.
At a briefing on Tuesday, Coast Guard officials say the owner of the pipeline, Third Coast, shut in the pipeline Thursday morning after noticing an anomaly in their meter readings. Three hours later, the Coast Guard received visual report of the spill.
"That was the report we received of oil on the surface of the water, and it was from a helicopter--a company helicopter--that regularly transits in the area," a Coast Guard official said during that briefing.
Now, several agencies are conducting aerial observations of the oil spill to keep track of the oil's movement as cleanup efforts continue. Meanwhile, the Coast Guard is using remote subs to find the source of the spill. The good news: the water that is on the surface appears to be dissipating quickly and moving offshore. The bad news: that's only the oil that's visible.
"Through the course of time, we have tracked that it has dissipated to just very, very small sections of very, very light sheen on the water," said Brandi Todd, a scientific support coordinator with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
According to Todd, satellite and field observations show the sheen is no longer well defined.
"Observations have identified the sheen to be very, very reduced and very, very light sheen about 50 miles south of the Louisiana bird's foot delta," Todd said.
That's just the oil that can be seen on the surface. Coast Guard officials say as much as half of the oil that leaked into the Gulf of Mexico could be trapped in the water column below the surface.
The oil spill on Thursday may have released 1.1 million gallons of oil into the gulf, but Coast Guard officials say they won't know exactly how much oil was spilled until they find the source of the spill.
