A two-mile long oil sheen spotted offshore of Huntington Beach near oil rigs was caused by natural seepage, not by a spill related to oil operations, according to the United States Coast Guard.
The sheen prompted quick response from the United Command, a group of several agencies that combine efforts to contain oil off the coast, formed following the 2021 oil spill in the same area that reached shore and impacted everything from beach access to businesses along the coastline.
Test results came back from the Office of Spill Prevention and Response – part of the Department of Fish and Wildlife – indicating the natural oil source, said Richard Uranga, US Coast Guard public affairs specialist.
“From the first initial stages, they were tracking that from the samples,” he said. “The oil rig samples were not the same as the oil that was gathered from the oil sheen.”
The Coast Guard received a report about 7 p.m. on Thursday, March 7, from the National Response Center about the sheen on the ocean’s surface off Huntington Beach’s coast. It was first spotted about 2.8 miles off Huntington Beach near two oil platforms, Emmy and Eva. It was visually confirmed at first light the next day and containment efforts began.
Operations are now complete, currently in the “decontamination phase” cleaning booms and boats, Uranga said.
Natural seepage can happen for many reasons, such as tectonic plate shifts, but it’s unclear why the large amount showed up on the sea’s surface, Uranga said.
“There’s no outlier or determination of what causes the seepage or discharge,” he said. “Normally, tar balls are common in Southern California waters, but not as much as this. We know the origin, it was natural seepage. But what caused so much natural seepage, we don’t know.”
According to the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration, crude oil entering the ocean is known as “seeps” and add about five million gallons of oil into the ocean each…
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