Oil spill tops 1 million gallons, threatens Gulf of Mexico wildlife
Skimming vessels are working to contain and recover oil from a spill in the Gulf of Mexico off the Louisiana coast, which the U.S. Coast Guard on Tuesday estimated to be at least 1.1 million gallons, The Washington Post reports.
The spill was discovered Thursday near a 67-mile pipeline, owned by Houston-based Third Coast Infrastructure, and the Coast Guard said it was still reviewing whether that pipeline was the source of the contamination.
On Friday, pilots on reconnaissance flights saw oil moving southwest from Plaquemines Parish. Under the surface, “remotely operated vehicles, deployed Friday morning, continue to survey the pipeline with no findings of a source area at this time,” the Coast Guard said in a Monday statement. “The vehicles will continue to survey the pipeline if weather conditions permit.”
The spill, officially called the “MPOG11015 incident,” is the latest in an area that has seen some of the worst offshore oil disasters in the nation’s history.
In 2010, 130 million gallons of crude poured into the Gulf of Mexico after an explosion at the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig. Six years before that, a hurricane toppled a Taylor Energy platform, causing crude to leak from several broken oil wells.
Starting in 2004, the lesser-known Taylor Energy spill continued without notice for nearly six years, and at least 30 million gallons entered the gulf, according to a study by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
British Petroleum paid more than $14 billion in fines and damages for the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe. Taylor Energy fought the federal government’s demands to stop and clean up its spill before finally agreeing to liquidate its assets and hand over $400 million in a trust last year.
