A pipeline owned by California Resources Corporation subsidiary Aera Energy spilled 96 barrels of produced fluid — a mixture of oil and water — early Friday morning at an oil field in Monterey County in California’s Central Coast.
The spill came from an eight-inch pipe and was contained to the immediate area, the company said in a report to the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services filed just after 7:00 a.m. local time. Flow to the pipe was shut, the release was stopped and the cause of the incident was unknown at the time, California Resources said. No waterways or storm drains were affected, according to the report.
The spill, although relatively small, comes as California Gov. Gavin Newsom seeks to boost oil production in the state as declines in domestic production and the knock on effect on the state’s dwindling number of refineries threaten to spike what are already the highest gasoline prices in the nation.
“In the past few weeks, we’ve seen numerous examples of how oil production threatens California’s communities and water supplies,” Hollin Kretzmann, an attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity’s Climate Law Institute, said in an emailed statement. “As long as we allow these dangerous operations to continue, we can expect to see more spills like this.”
California Resources did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The company is one of the largest oil drillers in the state and in September announced a merger with rival driller Berry Corp.
Top photo: Pumpjacks in the Belridge oil field near McKittrick, California. Photographer: Mario Tama/Getty Images.
Topics California Energy Oil Gas