ABC‘s Alex Stone - October 6, 2021 - KRDO‘s Afternoon News

The leading theory is that the large Southern California oil spill is the result of a large cargo ship’s anchor hooking the pipeline underwater and dragging it.  Divers have found a 4000 foot section of the pipeline was moved 150 feet and dragged along the bottom with a 13 inch gash where oil leaked out.  The CEO of Amplify Energy won’t talk publicly about how his employees responded to what unfolded or how alarms work to alert workers to a problem.  In a letter to the company officially ordering the pipeline shutdown, federal regulators say alarms sounded at 2:30am on Saturday indicating pressure loss in the pipeline which is a sign of a leak.  But the document says Amplify didn’t shutdown the pipeline until 6am, 3.5 hours later.  And that Amplify did not notify authorities for 3 more hours, 6 hours after the initial alarms.  It is all part of the investigation.