Oil spill

A US federal grand jury on Wednesday indicted Texas-based US company Amplify Energy for an oil spill off the coast of Orange County, California, in October that released about 25,000 gallons (95,000 litres) of fuel into the Pacific Ocean.

Two Amplify Energy subsidiaries, Beta Operating and San Pedro Bay Pipeline, have also been charged with committing the violations that led to the oil spill, The Hill reported. If found guilty, they face multi-million dollar fines and up to five years' "probation", according to the newspaper.

In early October, there was a major oil spill off the coast of Orange County, caused by an Amplify Energy pipeline accident, according to CNN. According to a county spokesman, the spill led to the death of many birds and fish species.

The US National Transportation Safety Board has dispatched its experts to investigate what happened. Local authorities cancelled a number of public events planned there as a precaution and advised coastal residents to avoid visiting the environmental disaster zone, and California Governor Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency in Orange County in response to the oil spill.

During the investigation, it was suggested that a German container ship, the Rotterdam Express, which was in the area and may have damaged the pipeline with its anchor, may have caused the oil spill.

While this theory has not been definitively discarded, there are strong indications that the damage was done long before this, and that the company that owns the pipeline was found to have violated its operating rules and repeatedly ignored the signals that indicated it had done so. The company had not even "noticed" the accident, although, according to a newspaper that has seen the charges, within 13 hours, eight alarms were sounded: the company shut them down and restarted the pipeline. The company attributed these actions to doubts about the reliability of the alarm sensors.

Even the huge oil slick on the water off the county's coast was reported by local residents, not by the company, whose management continued to assert that "everything is fine and under control".

The charges against Amplify Energy are, according to Foley, confirmation that the people were right.