Posted on 05/20/2015 4:32:11 AM PDT by thackney
An estimated 21,000 gallons of oil dumped into the ocean from a broken pipeline just off the central California coast before it was shut off on Tuesday, creating a spill stretching about 4 miles along the beach, the U.S. Coast Guard said.
Santa Barbara County health officials have shut down Refugio State Beach, the central site of the spill, though many had abandoned the site already because of the foul smell.
That smell brought county firefighters to the beach earlier in the day to discover the spill.
“They found about a half-mile slick of dark, black crude oil in the ocean,” fire Capt. Dave Zaniboni said.
They traced the oil to the onshore pipeline that spilled into a culvert that ran under the U.S. 101 freeway and through a storm drain into the ocean.
(Excerpt) Read more at fuelfix.com ...
It’s went from 5000 to 10000 and now it’s 20 thousand. I guess 20,000 gallons sound much better than 500 barrels.
The pipeline, built in 1991 and designed to carry about 150,000 barrels of oil per day, is owned by Houston-based Plains All American Pipeline, which said in a statement that it shut down the pipe. The culvert was also blocked to prevent more oil from flowing into the ocean, the company said.
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-pipeline-santa-barbara-coast-20150519-story.html
pictures at link
Really that is not much oil.
Not to diminish it, and I’m sure the responsible party will fix, clean up, & restore, BUT ...
My pool holds more water!
The company that owns that pipeline will probably go broke cleaning it up... Years ago I managed a distribution facility in New Jersey and I had a truck rupture a fuel tank. It was a small hole created by a rock kicked up. The driver discovered the leak at one of his stops. The driver promptly contained the leak. We lost maybe 5 gallons of diesel in a gravel parking lot. The Fire Dept had a hazmat team on site within minutes. We had to contact a certified Haz Mat remediation company to clean up 5 friggin gallons. The process, paperwork, etc was amazing. They even brought out companies to test streams miles away to make sure they were not contaminated. Total cost was around $30K. It was the craziest thing I had ever seen.
Not likely. While it makes for good pictures to the uninformed, this isn't that difficult to clean up.
Exxon Mobil offered to assist with clean-up efforts on Tuesday but was told its aid was not yet needed, a company spokesman told the Wall Street Journal.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/california-pipeline-ruptures-leaks-oil-into-pacific-ocean-1432088366
Clean-up efforts started Tuesday, with 1,500 feet of boom—a kind of floating curtain—deployed on the water to trap oil floating at the surface. So far, only 20 barrels of oil have been skimmed off the water, according to the Coast Guard.
“I want to manage your expectations. This could take some time,” Capt. Williams said, adding that the unified joint command responding to the spill does not intend to use chemical dispersants to dissolve the oil in the water.
We should remind folks that Refugio beach for over 10,000 years was covered with oil from thousands of natural seeps in the ocean floor. The seeping oil only reduced in the 1960s after offshore drilling reduced the pressure on the oil deposit but is still leaking from underground sources to this day. This spill is miniscule compared to history but the media needs something to attract viewers so they will not tell you the "whole truth".
I quote from http://nature.berkeley.edu/…/e…/projects/2001final/Owens.pdf
"Of the 1.9 billion gallons of oil entering the world’s oceans each year, 1.9% of this occurs naturally in the Santa Barbara channel off the coast of Santa Barbara, California."
That's 36 million gallons from natural seeps. Or you could say this spill amounts to .0044% of the total oil placed in the channel by natural sources.
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