Pipeline company evades questions over a 15-hour gap before reporting oil spill

When workers for the company operating the Elly drilling rig saw oil in the water miles from the California shoreline, they didn’t immediately call authorities. At 8:55 a.m. Saturday, an emergency response employee at the crisis company Witt O’Brien’s informed federal authorities that a leaking pipeline had sent crude oil pouring into the water off Orange County, turbocharging the U.S. Coast Guard’s investigation of a substantial spill that residents miles inland said they could smell. When asked at a news conference this week why the Coast Guard had reported the incident’s discovery time as 2:30 a.m., Willsher said there “was no 2:30 time.” He later described PHMSA’s report of the 2:30 a.m. alarm as “initial” and said that the company was “not aware of any oil in water at 2:30 a.m.” He did not elaborate. On Wednesday, Willsher said workers turned the pump for the pipeline on from 6 a.m. to 6:05 a.m. Saturday to perform a “meter reading” and that no oil was pumped after that. Willsher has not said what happened on the platform between the pipeline shutoff and the workers seeing oil in the water at 8:09 a.m. Once they saw the oily sheen, he said, employees “instantly” radioed back to the offshore platforms, where workers launched their incident response plan.