A federal grand jury has accused oil company Amplify Energy Corp. and two of its subsidiaries with negligently discharging oil during a pipeline break in California in early October.
An indictment filed on Wednesday charges Houston-based Amplify and its subsidiaries, Beta Operating Co. and San Pedro Bay Pipeline Co., with one misdemeanor count of negligent discharge of oil. The companies own and operate the 17-mile-long San Pedro Bay Pipeline.
If found guilty, the companies face a maximum of five years of probation as well as potentially millions of dollars in fines.
Amplify has disputed the allegations, saying it had investigated the pipeline once alerted to a leak, but that crew were unaware that the leak detection system was malfunctioning.
The detection system was “wrongly signaling a potential leak at the platform where no leak could be detected by the platform personnel and where no leak was actually occurring,” it said in a statement.
They also accused the company of continuing to pump oil through the pipeline for three additional hours on Oct. 1 into the early hours of the morning while a manual leak test was performed, despite the sixth and seventh alarms going off.
After the eighth alarm went off, the company continued to operate the pipeline for nearly one hour before dawn of Oct. 2 after a boat they contacted failed to see discharged oil in the middle of the night, prosecutors said.
The crew operating the pipeline were also “understaffed and fatigued,” and had not been sufficiently trained on the automated leak detection system, federal prosecutors say.
As a result, the DOJ said an estimated 25,000 gallons of crude oil was leaked from a crack in a 16-inch oil pipeline that the company operates approximately 4.7 miles west of Huntington Beach.
The Epoch Times has contacted a spokesperson at Amplify for comment.
The spill caused significant ecological damage, leaving birds and fish marred in petroleum, while many of them reportedly washed up on shores, from Huntington Beach to San Clemente and beyond.
Meanwhile, dozens of residents were exposed to oil contaminants, prompting the Orange County Health Care Agency to issue a brief health advisory.
At the time, the conservation advocacy group Oceana responded to the spill, calling for an end to offshore oil and gas drilling.
“As a precautionary measure, all of the company’s production and pipeline operations at the Beta Field have been shut down,” the company said at the time, noting that it was working with the Coast Guard and California Department of Fish and Wildlife’s Office of Spill Prevention and Response.
“This commitment will continue to guide our response to this incident, and we will work closely and cooperate with all regulatory and governmental bodies,” they added.
