MSC and COSCO sued over last year’s Californian pipeline spill
American pipeline owner Amplify Energy Corp is suing Mediterranean Shipping Co (MSC) and COSCO over a big oil spill off the Californian coastline last autumn.
The two liners are accused of dragging anchor over Amplify’s pipeline, causing damage. The pipeline, which was used to transfer crude oil from several offshore facilities to a processing plant in Long Beach, began leaking on the afternoon of October 1.
The federal court filing also accuses the Marine Exchange of Southern California of failing to route the two boxships – MSC Danit and COSCO Beijing – to deeper waters before an impending storm and failing to inform Amplify after the anchor-dragging incidents.
“It is entirely foreseeable that allowing massive container ships to remain anchored near a pipeline might, in the event of a storm, result in damage to that pipeline and subsequent harm to the environment,” Amplify wrote in its filing, adding more than 20 other vessels left anchorages outside the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach to ride out the storm’s high winds and waves in deeper water.
Amplify faces a criminal charge for its oversight of the accident, accused of taking too long to react to the spill. About 25,000 gallons of crude oil were discharged from a point approximately 7 km west of Huntington Beach from a crack in the pipeline.
