A Texas oil company was granted permission to repair an underwater pipeline that ruptured off the coast of Orange County a year ago, spilled tens of thousands of gallons of crude, and forced beaches and fisheries to close.
"The Biden administration just ramped up the risk of yet another ugly oil spill on California's beautiful coast," said Brady Bradshaw of the Center for Biological Diversity. "Unfortunately, people living near offshore drilling infrastructure are all too familiar with this abusive cycle of drill, spill, repeat.
" On Wednesday, the environmental group sued the federal government for allowing the platform where the pipeline originated to operate under outdated plans that indicated the platform should have been decommissioned more than a decade ago. The lawsuit also said the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management failed to review and require plan revisions, despite the spill. Amplify contended that the spill wouldn't have occurred if two ships hadn't dragged their anchors across the pipeline and damaged it during a January 2021 storm. It said it wasn't notified about the anchor snagging until after the spill. While the size of the spill was not as bad as initially feared, U.S. prosecutors said the company should have been able to turn off the damaged line much sooner had it recognized the gravity of a series of leak-detection alarms over a 13-hour period. The first alarm sounded late on the afternoon of Oct. 1, 2021, but workers misinterpreted the cause, according to the federal plea agreement. When the alarm sounded throughout the night, workers shut down the pipeline to investigate and then restarted it after deciding they were false alarms. That spewed more oil.As part of a federal court agreement to pay a $7 million fine and nearly $6 million in expenses incurred by agencies including the U.S. Coast Guard, the company and subsidiaries agreed to install a new leak-detection system and train employees to identify and respond to potential leaks. The company agreed to plead no contest to six state misdemeanor charges and pay $4.9 million in penalties and fines as part of a settlement.
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