Leaking California oil pipe's safeguards not fully working

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The ruptured offshore pipeline that spilled tens of thousands of gallons of crude oil off the Southern California coast this fall did not have a fully functioning leak detection system at the time, according to a report obtained by The Associated Press.

The report was compiled by pipeline operator, Beta Offshore, a subsidiary of Houston-based Amplify Energy, and filed with federal regulators. It reveals Amplify is investigating whether personnel or control room issues contributed to the accident but does not explain what was wrong with the detection system.

The report, filed last week and released to the AP under a public records request, gives no new details on a possible anchor strike on the pipeline from a cargo ship suspected to be the cause of the roughly 25,000-gallon (112,000-liter) spill. Coast Guard investigators have said they suspect the pipeline began leaking long after it was snagged by the drifting cargo ship during strong winds in January.

It’s not clear why it took so long for the 1/2-inch (1.25-centimeter) thick steel line to leak, or whether another anchor strike or other incident led to the rupture and spill. But experts say that a properly functioning leak detection system might have been able to catch that things were amiss before an oil sheen spotted on the surface led to the leak’s discovery.

“The fact that they did not have the leak detection system working is surprising,” University of Houston pipeline expert Ramanan Krishnamoorti said, noting that the company’s accounting of the accident appeared inconsistent. “For experienced hands at this, when you’ve got a leak like this, you’d have seen signatures of it with pressure drops and flow rates.”

The spill came ashore at Huntington Beach and forced about a weeklong closure of...