California Investigates Potential Offshore Oil Spill Near LA

(Bloomberg) -- California officials are investigating a potential oil spill south of Los Angeles near Huntington Beach, close to where a serious offshore leak occurred in 2021.

The US Coast Guard on Friday reported an oily sheen 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) long and 0.5 miles wide near the Emmy and Eva oil platforms, about 2.8 miles off Huntington Beach.

California Resource Corp., the operator of Emmy, said there was no leak or spill from its installation. Amplify Energy Corp., another company operating in the area, and which earlier had alerted regulators to a wastewater leak from its Elly platform, said it had no indication the reported sheen was related to its own operations. Eva is operated by DCOR LLC, which didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Amplify shares tumbled as much as 43% before trading was temporary halted. The stock closed 18% lower in New York.

Huntington Beach, dubbed “Surf City USA,” is a popular destination for surfers and swimmers. Its waters were the site of spill in 2021 that was California’s worst in almost 30 years. In that incident, oil leaked from a pipeline owned by Amplify. The company last year agreed to pay $50 million to resolve claims related to the spill.

Huntington Beach’s marine safety division is also evaluating the coastline, but has not seen evidence of a spill, the agency wrote Friday on social-media platform X. 

The US Pacific Coast has roughly 26 oil and natural gas platforms in federal and state waters, all of them off the coast of California. Huntington beach is about 15 miles from Long Beach, home to oil refineries operated by Marathon Petroleum Corp., Phillips 66, Valero Energy Corp. and PBF Energy Inc.

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