O.C. oil spill was caused by natural ocean seepage, not drilling, officials say

[RZehr]

An oil sheen that appeared off the coast of Huntington Beach late last week was caused by a natural seep from the ocean floor, Coast Guard officials said Monday.

Seeps occur when crude oil leaks from fractures in the seafloor or rises up through seafloor sediments.

The sheen was first reported Thursday evening about 2.5 nautical miles off Huntington Beach near two oil platforms, Emmy and Eva.

By Sunday morning, officials were no longer seeing a sheen in the water, according to the Coast Guard, but they had skimmed about 85 gallons of oil from the ocean and removed about 1,050 pounds of oily waste and tar balls from the shoreline.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/o-c-oil-spil ... 11402.html

Hard to believe that there is so much oil left that it is just seeping out of the sea bed. Should stick a pipe down there to relieve the pressure and use the oil.

[Ken]

An oil sheen that appeared off the coast of Huntington Beach late last week was caused by a natural seep from the ocean floor, Coast Guard officials said Monday.

Seeps occur when crude oil leaks from fractures in the seafloor or rises up through seafloor sediments.

The sheen was first reported Thursday evening about 2.5 nautical miles off Huntington Beach near two oil platforms, Emmy and Eva.

By Sunday morning, officials were no longer seeing a sheen in the water, according to the Coast Guard, but they had skimmed about 85 gallons of oil from the ocean and removed about 1,050 pounds of oily waste and tar balls from the shoreline.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/o-c-oil-spil ... 11402.html

Hard to believe that there is so much oil left that it is just seeping out of the sea bed. Should stick a pipe down there to relieve the pressure and use the oil.

There are oil deposits all over the place that aren't necessarily large enough to be commercially viable. To exploit an oil deposit on the sea floor the following would have to happen:

1. Minerals Management Service would have to prepare a lease auction for that tract of sea floor which is a long multi-year process of environmental reviews, consultations with states, tribes, etc.

2. Some oil company have to bid on it and then decide, after more exploration that it is commercially viable and worth exploiting now instead of just banking it for the future. Vast amounts of oil reserves are controlled by oil companies but they are just banking them for the future.

3. The oil company would have to drill the commercial wells and install the pipelines and such which is more hundreds of millions of dollars and lots more environmental review.

In this case, if the seepage is from existing lease areas already under exploitation by the company that already has rigs off Huntington Beach then they aren't necessarily going to spend the millions to put up a new platform in a new spot if they could even accomplish that in any reasonable amount of time given the long environmental reviews and such that would be involved with constructing new platforms and pipelines off of the California Coast. Even if it was commercially exploitable. They might just be banking it for future decades.

Everything about the oil industry happens very slowly and carefully and costs enormous amounts of money, ESPECIALLY offshore oil drilling.

[RZehr]

Seems like they could skip environmental reviews. All they serve at this point, is to slow things down. What do they hope to accomplish that we don’t already know? We either have the technology to drill safely or we don’t. And that doesn’t change with more environmental reviews.

[Ken]

Seems like they could skip environmental reviews. All they serve at this point, is to slow things down. What do they hope to accomplish that we don’t already know? We either have the technology to drill safely or we don’t. And that doesn’t change with more environmental reviews.

Mostly they serve to provide the public with an opportunity to comment and provide input when a major corporation wants to built offshore oil rigs and put in undersea pipelines in their own back yard. It is a public ocean and public sea floor, and the public is entitled to review and weigh in on what multinational companies are doing in their own back yard.

And yes, they serve a purpose. One of which is to make sure the company is actually following current best practices and doing things in the safest and most environmentally sound manner. Just because we can fairly safely drill for oil offshore these days, doesn't mean a corporation is actually going to spend all the extra money to do it the best and safest way unless they are forced to. Environmental reviews are a part of that.

[Neto]

Use it or loose it.

[Ken]

Use it or loose it.

It's not necessarily usable.

[MaxPC]

An oil sheen that appeared off the coast of Huntington Beach late last week was caused by a natural seep from the ocean floor, Coast Guard officials said Monday.

Seeps occur when crude oil leaks from fractures in the seafloor or rises up through seafloor sediments.

The sheen was first reported Thursday evening about 2.5 nautical miles off Huntington Beach near two oil platforms, Emmy and Eva.

By Sunday morning, officials were no longer seeing a sheen in the water, according to the Coast Guard, but they had skimmed about 85 gallons of oil from the ocean and removed about 1,050 pounds of oily waste and tar balls from the shoreline.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/o-c-oil-spil ... 11402.html

Hard to believe that there is so much oil left that it is just seeping out of the sea bed. Should stick a pipe down there to relieve the pressure and use the oil.

The last time I heard about that occurring near Huntington Beach, an earthquake occurred within the week.

[RZehr]

The oil industry in California should sue the environmental groups over this seepage pollution. Basically, if it wasn't for them, this oil would have been safely pumped out. But now, it has cause unnecessary environmental pollution of the sea and beach.

[Ken]

The oil industry in California should sue the environmental groups over this seepage pollution. Basically, if it wasn't for them, this oil would have been safely pumped out. But now, it has cause unnecessary environmental pollution of the sea and beach.

Riiiiight.

Your confidence in the oil industry's ability to safely extract petroleum from the sea floor is impressive.

Just two short years ago, this very same Texas company operating in this very same location spilled 25,000 gallons of oil right off the coast of Huntington Beach. For which they were found guilty of criminal negligence and paid millions in fines: https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodi ... 022-09-08/

This current seepage is estimated to be in the several hundred gallon range at best. And according to the latest news reports, they still haven't definitively determined the case (natural or some sort of production-related spill).