Jessica Resnick Ault and Nichola Garoom

LOS ANGELES. Calif. (Reuters). Hundreds of ships have crammed into the port complex at the site of this weekend’s California oil spillage. This is according to port data. Investigators investigate whether a ship anchor might have hit a pipe to trigger the leak.

Over 3,000 barrels oil were leaked into California’s Pacific Ocean, killing wildlife and damaging fragile environmental areas. Beaches were closed. Officials are looking into whether an anchor may have struck the pipeline owned by Amplify energy Corp of Houston.

According to two ex-Ampliify employees, an anchor strike might be the explanation. They asked not for their names. These two former Amplify employees noted that anchor strikes had previously damaged or dented offshore pipelines.

Due to supply chain bottlenecks, more anchors were present in the area as consumers demand recovered from the depths the pandemic. The Marine Exchange of Southern California reported that there were 63 ships waiting in San Pedro Bay to unload at Los Angeles and Long Beach on Tuesday morning. A record-breaking 97 ships were backlogged on Sept. 19.

According to Captain Kip Louttit, Marine Exchange who stated that there were usually only one container ship anchoring in the bay prior to the pandemic and added that the anchorages surrounding the port had been filled for the past year.

Louttit stated that all ships had been anchored exactly where they should have,” Louttit said about the backup vessel.

Numerous beaches have been closed due to the spillage, and animals in Orange County (south of Los Angeles) were killed. Todd Spitzer from Orange County, the Orange County District Attorney said Monday that an investigation had been launched to establish the cause of the incident and Amplify might be held responsible for civil and criminal damages.

SkyTruth, an environmental watchdog, said that satellite imagery of Oct. 1 shows cargo ships anchoring near the location where the pipeline runs. According to government maps, SkyTruth is the closest. SkyTruth president John Amos stated that the closest was approximately 450m from the pipeline.

Amos explained in an interview, “That seems like quite a long distance to disconnect that pipeline and that ship. But one thing that I don’t understand is how accurate this government data about exactly where this pipeline is located on the seafloor.”

From the Elly platform (255 feet below the seafloor), the pipeline follows the ocean floor to the port. Some sections of the pipeline are submerged while some others rise above the sand.

A company boat and its contractors inspect the pipeline about once every week. They look out for any signs that there might be a spillage, leak, anomaly, etc. The product that comes out of the pipeline is tested for iron by chemical analysts. This could be indicative of corrosion or loss.

Every three years, metal devices known as “smartpigs” run through the pipeline to look for anomalies. Martyn Willsher, CEO of Amplify Energy said that the last such test took place in 2019.

Huntington Beach was located approximately 40 miles (65kms) south of Los Angeles. There were 13 square miles (33.4 km) of ocean, and parts of the coastline that had been “covered with oil,” according to Mayor Kim Carr. Surf City USA is a town that advertises itself to be the best place in Southern California, where it’s possible to see the oil platforms from the coast.

Residents were furious at the slow response of Amplify to the spillage. Peter Moses Gutierrez Jr., a local DJ has already filed a lawsuit against Amplify.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, 23 facilities for oil and gas production are located in federal waters just off California’s coast. Amplify’s Beta Offshore unit includes the Elly offshore platform that was used to connect the pipeline.