LOS ANGELES (AP) — A dead dolphin and three dead pelicans have been found near the area of an oil spill on the California coast, officials said Friday.
Veterinarian Michael Ziccardi said it’s not clear if the dolphin found in Santa Barbara Harbor died from exposure to the crude oil that spilled into the ocean from a leak in an underground pipe about 20 miles away.
Ziccardi, the director of the Oiled Wildlife Care Network, said two sea lions, an elephant seal and six pelicans have been rescued.
The sheen of oil that now covers nearly 10 square miles is thinner than a coat of paint and is becoming harder to skim from choppy, wind-driven waters, officials said.
Bad weather slowed cleanup efforts early Friday at the spill site in Santa Barbara County, where gusty winds whipped up waves as high as 4 feet.
Several days of calm seas had helped crews, but oil skimming vessels had to be brought to shore late Thursday, Santa Barbara news station KEYT-TV reported.
A state parks official said Refugio and El Capitan state beaches and campgrounds will be closed until June 4, a week longer than originally announced.
The cause of the leak, which spilled up to 105,000 gallons of crude into a coastal ditch Tuesday, is unknown. About a fifth of that oil is estimated to have flowed into the sea northwest of Santa Barbara.
It could take weeks or even months before investigators find what caused the disaster.
Crews have yet to excavate the broken piece of pipeline, which under the law must be done in the presence of federal regulators and a third party, officials with Plains All American Pipeline LP said.
“We have not even uncovered the pipe yet,” Patrick Hodgins, the company’s senior director of safety, said at a news conference Thursday.
The Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration said the company has been ordered to test the damaged line and empty the remainder of it before it can restart the flow of oil.
Investigators for the agency are looking into whether there was something Plains should have known about conditions in the underground pipeline and factors that could have contributed to the accident.
The 10.6-mile line had recently been inspected, but the results weren’t known. Tests of the 24-inch pipe in 2012 found 41 anomalies mostly due to external corrosion, frequently near welds, the federal agency said.
The company has said there were no previous problems with the pipe.
The company would not yet say whether part of the cause was two malfunctions that occurred shortly before the spill was discovered.
“We were having some pump problems on the pipeline,” said Rick McMichael, another Plains All American representative. “Whether it led to the leak or not is part of our investigation.”
Plains All American and its subsidiaries operate 17,800 miles of crude oil and natural gas pipelines across the country, according to the federal agency.
Since 2006, four subsidiaries of Plains All American have reported at least 223 accidents along their lines and been subject to 25 enforcement actions by federal regulators.
The accidents resulted in a combined 864,300 gallons of hazardous liquids spilled and damages topping $32 million. Corrosion was determined to be the cause in more than 70 of those accidents. Failures in materials, welds and other equipment were cited more than 80 times.
Hodgins, of Plains All American, said the company has spent more than $1.3 billion since 2007 on maintenance, repair and enhancement of its equipment.
He defended the company’s safety record, saying accidental releases have decreased as the number of miles of pipelines has increased.
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Associated Press writers Christopher Weber in Los Angeles and Matthew Brown in Billings, Montana, contributed to this report.
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