The oil spill off Orange County has generated so much news it’s hard to keep up.
What’s more, much of the news about the spill hasn’t been conclusive, raising new questions.
With that in mind, here’s a quick primer on what is known – and what isn’t – about the environmental catastrophe washing up on Orange County shores.
Q: What spilled?
A: On Thursday, Oct. 14, the Coast Guard said the amount of oil spilled into the ocean probably is closer to the low-end estimate of 25,000 gallons than the early high-end amount of 131,000 gallons of naturally occurring crude oil.
Amplify Energy, the company responsible for the pipeline linked to the spill, says the crude oil in this event had a gravity rating of 13 degrees, meaning it is light enough to float on water and it is unlikely that a glob of oil remains on the ocean floor.
Also, crude oil includes other elements, such as sulfur, that need to be removed during the refinement process. It’s unclear what other elements are in the crude oil involved in this spill and what those elements might do to the environment.
Q: When did the spill happen?
A: Unknown.
What is known is that a credible report of an oil slick off the coast of Huntington Beach was sent to a Coast Guard hotline on Friday, Oct. 1, at 8:22 p.m. A few hours earlier, people in Newport Beach, Costa Mesa and Irvine, among other communities, called police and other agencies to report gas-like odors in their neighborhoods. In Newport Beach, fire officials were actively trying to figure out what was causing the smell.
Several hours later, on Saturday, Oct. 2, around 2:30 a.m., an alarm notified the operators of the pipeline that pressure was dropping in their line and a possible spill was underway, federal regulators said. Within hours, the spill was confirmed by the company and the Coast Guard. The pipeline was turned off around 6 a.m.
But investigators have raised the possibility of a different timeline. They believe it’s possible an anchor from a cargo ship struck the pipeline, possibly weeks or months before the spill. The idea is that damage from that collision – if such a collision occurred – might have led to the degradation of the pipe prior to its rupture.
Q: How many pipelines are out there? Could they also leak?
A: There are at least 10 oil pipelines running from the shore to drilling platforms in the ocean from Orange County to north Santa Barbara County. At least three other pipelines run between platforms at sea.
All those lines connect the oil being pulled from beneath the ocean floor to oil refining operations on land.
In all, there are 23 offshore platforms in federal waters off of California. All were built in the 1970s and ’80s, meaning they have been exposed for decades to natural elements that can degrade their structural integrity and increase the possibility of a spill.
Not all of those platforms are active; 11 no longer produce oil or gas and five are in the process of being decommissioned.
And, yes, all the active pipelines could leak. In 2015, a pipeline burst near the coast of Refugio State Beach in Santa Barbara County. That spill put about 140,000 gallons of crude oil into the ocean and along the coast.
Q: Who provides oversight for those operations?
A: The industry itself, largely.
Though several federal agencies monitor offshore oil drilling, pipelines and technology related to their operations, those agencies often depend on reports made by companies that inspect their own equipment. In 2019 and again in 2020 – about a year before the spill – Amplify Energy inspected its local pipeline and told the government there was no need for any big upgrades.
Though there is no reason to believe those reports were false or erroneous, environmental groups and even the federal General Accounting Office suggest that the relationship between oil drillers and federal regulators is too cozy.
Q: How damaging is this spill?
A: That’s still being sorted out.
Obviously, 131,000 gallons of oil in the water would have been worse than 25,000 gallons, so it’s possible the spill will do less environmental and commercial damage than initially feared. Also, to date, people haven’t found huge numbers of birds and other animals killed by the spill.
But that doesn’t mean 25,000 gallons of oil in the ocean is healthy for the environment. Fish (and people who depend on fishing) are already being harmed, and it’s unknown how many birds and aquatic animals in the ocean have been harmed or killed by the spill.
What’s more, scientists say it takes years for the ocean to recover from oil spills. Chemicals from the oil dissolve into the water and affect plankton, which is the base of the ocean food chain. That, in turn, can affect fish and plant life over long periods of time.
The spill also might harm coastal wetlands. Though barriers appear to have prevented oil from pouring into the Bolsa Chica wetlands, the 25-acre Talbert Marsh might suffer lasting damage. Again, that’s still being determined.
Broadly speaking, scientists point out the local ocean was getting healthier during the first 15 years of this century, a result of improved regulations on urban runoff, sewage, fishing and plastics. But in the past few years, scientists say, those gains have started to reverse, in part because of one-time events like the pandemic (which led to more plastics in the ocean) and in part because the ocean increasingly reflects the effects of global warming. The spill will contribute to the recent backsliding, though it’s unclear, for now, how much.
Q: What will the spill mean for the future of offshore oil production?
A: Offshore oil drilling hasn’t been popular in California for decades, and this spill isn’t going to help those who like the idea of pulling crude from beneath the sea.
In the wake of the spill, politicians from both major political parties expressed a desire to end drilling off California’s coast. There’s also language in the current version of the Build Back Better package currently being debated in Congress that would phase out offshore oil drilling except in the areas near Louisiana and Texas.
Experts suggest the spill might help turn environmental issues, broadly speaking, into a political winner for candidates pushing to curb global warming.
The anti-drilling side points out that the 23 platforms off California’s coast generate only a sliver of the country’s oil production. In fact, if you measure it by the amount of oil unearthed in the United States in any given year, California’s offshore production accounts for one-third of one day.
It’s possible that some of the companies currently drilling off California’s coast might welcome government money to close and cap those wells.
But that’s the short-term battle. The long-term fight over drilling off California’s coast might be about global warming. Geologists and oil industry experts believe there are huge, untapped reserves of oil off of California. And if oil continues to be seen by many as critical to economic growth, the pressure to reach those reserves someday might intensify. If that dynamic changes, the pressure to drill also might wane.
