ASHINGTON (Sputnik) — The United States needs to do more to regulate the oil industry amid the California spill on Tuesday that caused some 21,000 gallons of crude oil to spread nine miles along its Pacific Ocean coastline, Sierra Club California chapter Director Kathryn Phillips told Sputnik.
“This oil spill is just one more signal to the [US President Barack] Obama administration to the [California Governor Jerry] Brown administration that they need to be more aggressive about stopping bad practices and bad ideas,” Phillips told Sputnik on Wednesday.
On Tuesday afternoon, a 24-inch oil pipeline owned by the Houston-based Plains All American Pipeline leaked about 21,000 gallons of crude oil from Refugio State Beach into the Pacific Ocean for several hours before it was secured.
Phillips noted that Tuesday’s oil spill proved that pipeline was “not being maintained or monitored as carefully as it needed.”
“This is one of the wealthiest industries in the world, and for them to have the kind of profits they have, and then produce the kind of mess they produce, without the kind of outrage we would expect from public this officials, it’s ridiculous,” Phillips said.
Consequently, the United States needs to start looking more aggressively at “closing down those sorts of oil industry practices that we know create pollution,” she added, and include more up to date equipment, more frequent inspections and careful monitoring.
Earlier on Wednesday, US Coast Guard Captain Jennifer said that the spill had spread nearly nine miles through the Santa Barbara coast while US federal, state and local responders had scrambled to contain the oil from spreading, and were working to remove oil from the sand.
Meanwhile, a Captain of the Department of Fish and Wildlife overseeing the spill response admitted the spill would be a challenge to contain, and would likely have environmental implications.
A team of responders from the US Coast Guard, the California Office of Emergency Services, the California Fish and Wildlife, numerous fire departments as well as Exxon Mobil continue to work at the site of the spill, while the investigation into the cause of the pipeline rupture continues, according to the US Coast Guard.
