The pipeline that spilled at least 126,000 gallons of oil into the Pacific Ocean off the California coast may have been damaged up to a year earlier, according to preliminary results of an ongoing investigation, the U.S. Coast Guard said.
Officials have said the leak occurred three miles off the coast of Newport Beach, Calif., and involved a failure in a 17.5-mile pipeline connected to an offshore oil platform called Elly that is operated by Beta Offshore.
The pipeline was intact as of October 2020, according to a routine survey conducted at that time by Beta Offshore, Capt. Jason Neubauer of the Coast Guard said on Friday at a news conference near Los Angeles.
“So that is going to be, for now, our starting point for investigating,” he said.
Investigators are “fairly certain” that an anchor from a “large vessel” struck the pipeline’s concrete casing, and dragged the pipeline more than 100 feet from its original location, Captain Neubauer said.
Source Article from https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/09/us/oil-spill-pacific-ocean.html
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