UCSB researcher among four people honored for help on massive oil spill investigation Friday
ISLA VISTA, Calif. – The FBI honored a UCSB researcher and three others in an award ceremony last Friday for their help investigating a huge oil spill of up to 25,000 gallons across Southern California in 2021.
This massive amount of crude oil leaked in early Oct. 2021 from a pipeline connected to an oil platform named Elly, operated by Beta as a subsidiary of the Texas-based, Amplify Energy corporation.
Marine environments from Huntington Beach to San Diego saw beach closures, harmed wildlife and compromised protection areas though a cause remained unclear until the investigation team began their work.
Dr. Mark Page of UCSB's Marine Science Institute, DOI/BOEM divers Donna Schroeder and Susan Zaleski and Dr. Cohrane of the DOI-USGS all made their efforts to determine the cause for the hazardous conditions.
Zaleski and Schroeder recovered evidence alongside the FBI's Underwater Search and Evidence Recovery Team to find a burst pipe and delivered these samples to the FBI who then passed it onto Dr. Page.
Dr. Page then estimated a timeframe for when the pipe first exposed itself from barnacle samples growing on the pipe and determined a timeline of eight months dating back to Jan. 2021.
This timeframe matched when a significant storm hit offshore as an anchor drag across the ocean floor during that time provided more evidence.
Dr. Cochrane then used this sample to find that two ships overlapped with this timeline and caused significant damage to the pipe of over 100 feet across.
Both ships, the MCD Danit and the Beijing, were believed to be responsible for the damage due to their anchors dragging across the pipe.
The oil company, Amplify, pled guilty to these damages with over $12 million in criminal fees and nearly $6 million in cleanup fees have been charged to the company.
Amplify also agreed to another $50 million toward the 10,000 victims of the spill as civil litigation declared another $45 million in civil penalties for a total of $95 million to be paid out to victims of the spill.
