An oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is spreading and is threatening the health of local marine wildlife as officials are working to contain and recover more than a million gallons of oil.
The incident occurred off the Louisiana coast and the U.S. Coast Guard estimated the spill to involve roughly 1.1 million gallons of oil. It was first discovered on Thursday near a 67-mile pipeline that is operated by the Main Pass Oil Gathering Co.
Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill
The company is owned by Houston-based Third Coast Infrastructure. The Coast Guard said that it was still working on reviewing whether or not the pipeline was the source of the oil spill. Pilots on Friday who went on reconnaissance flights saw oil moving southwest from Plaquemines Parish.
In a statement on Monday, the Coast Guard noted that they deployed "remotely operated vehicles" under the surface on Friday morning. These continued to survey the pipeline with no findings of a source area at the time of the statement, as per the Washington Post.
The recent spill was officially called the "MPOG11015 incident" and is the latest in an area that has experienced some of the worst offshore oil disasters in the history of the country. It comes after 130 million gallons of crude poured in 2010 into the Gulf of Mexico. It came after an explosion at the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig.
Six years prior to that incident, a hurricane toppled a Taylor Energy Platform that caused crude to leak from several broken oil wells. The lesser-known Taylor Energy spill continued without notice from 2004, causing at least 30 million gallons of oil to enter the gulf.
British Petroleum paid more than $14 billion in fines and damages for the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe. On the other hand, 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 more than $400 million in a trust last year.
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Determining the Origin of the Leak
The Coast Guard posted on Facebook saying that the oil from the latest spill was "skimmed and sampled" roughly four miles southeast of South Pass, Louisiana. That was the time when they retrieved about 210 gallons of "oily-water mixture." They also retrieved more oil on Sunday about 13 miles southeast of the Parish, according to CBS News.
In a social media post, Plaquemines Parish officials said that they were monitoring the incident over the weekend but have not shared further details since. The Coast Guard added that the Unified Command was working tirelessly to determine where the oil spill originated from but noted that there have been no reports of injuries or shoreline impacts so far.
In the last five decades, there have been more than 44 oil spills that discharged more than 420,000 gallons each in U.S. waters. Every year, thousands of smaller leaks, a single barrel or less, occur in the region. However, the NOAA notes that even small amounts of oil can have severe impacts on local wildlife and ecosystems, said The Hill.
