Amplify Energy Corp. and its companies that operate several oil rigs and a pipeline off Long Beach were charged by a federal grand jury with a single misdemeanor count of illegally discharging oil.
Amplify blamed the unnamed shipping company for displacing the pipeline and said workers on and offshore responded to what they believed were false alarms because the system wasn't functioning properly. It was signaling a potential leak at the platform where no leak was occurring, the company said."Had the crew known there was an actual oil spill in the water, they would have shut down the pipeline immediately," the company said.
Just days after the spill, Amplify CEO Martyn Willsher had refused to answer questions at news conferences about the timeline surrounding the spill and a report that an alarm at 2:30 a.m. Oct. 2 alerted controllers about a possible spill. He maintained the company didn't learn of the spill until a boat saw a sheen on the water at 8:09 a.m. that morning.
Even after the eighth and final alarm sounded, the pipeline operated for nearly an hour in the early morning, prosecutors said."I understand there are false positives on leak detection systems but this is our treasured coastline," said Caram, director of the Bellingham, Washington-based Pipeline Safety Trust.
"Fatigue and overworked staff is old and trite and inexcusable," he said. "This has been demonstrated over and over again as being the single most important vulnerability."