At least some of the tar that first washed up on Manhattan Beach on May 27 was from the May 19 oil spill over 100 miles north in Refugio State Beach in Santa Barbara County, according to the company responsible for the spill and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.
Plains All American Pipeline, L.P. and the state agency announced the initial results of their testing, which was done in different labs, on Monday.
The Texas-based oil company said that scientists at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts and UC Santa Barbara had tested six samples so far. Two of the samples appeared to have come from the spill, and the rest from natural seepages in the Santa Barbara area.
“Analysis of initial samples suggests that some of the Line 901 released oil appears to have migrated over time to beaches in Ventura and Los Angeles Counties along with oil from other sources, some of which has been confirmed to be from natural oil seeps,” the company said in a press release.
Easy Reader reported last week that on June 16, Plains agreed to pay a South Bay man, Robert Cole, for damage done to a sail on his boat by floating tar in the water off of Redondo Beach the day before oil first washed ashore. The company didn’t didn’t admit responsibility or say if it had any other claims from the South Bay.
The California Department of Fish and Wildlife’s announcement focused on the results of a single sample that it tied to the Refugio oil spill.
“Although the test results of this tarball sample matched the Refugio Incident oil spill, the source of all tarballs on Manhattan Beach cannot be determined based on one sample,” the press release said.
The results came from the department’s Petroleum Chemistry Laboratory in Rancho Cordova. ER
