Some 126,000 gallons of heavy crude oil leaked from the pipeline over the weekend, impacting a 25-mile stretch from Dana Point to Huntington Beach in the grater Los Angeles metropolitan area. The authorities shut down and suctioned the pipeline. Amplify Energy owns the company that operates the pipeline.
“We have gone over the entire 8,000 feet [of pipeline] and there’s no active leak that we are aware of… there’s no indication whatsoever that there’s anything further coming from that leak,” Willsher said on Monday.
A unified response team from the US Coast Guard, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife and other state and local partners have been running aerial assessments of the ocean and on-foot assessments of the beaches to gauge the impact of the spill.
A fish swims under oil slicks in the Talbert Channel after a major oil spill off the coast of California has come ashore in Huntington Beach, California, U.S. October 3, 2021.
© REUTERS / GENE BLEVINS
The California Fish and Wildlife Department said during the update that they issued a fishery closure to prohibit recreational and commercial fishing in much of the impacted area, which extends roughly from Huntington Beach to Laguna Beach.
Although officials have yet to pinpoint the exact cause of the spill, local authorities revealed on Monday that investigators are looking into the possibility that a ship's anchor may have accidentally struck the pipeline and caused the weekend disaster.
Wilsher had told reporters that the anchor option is "one of the distinct possibilities" behind the leak; however, Coast Guard Lt. Cmdr. Jeannie Shaye later reiterated that the investigation is still in the early "assessment phase right now."