For starters, what is going on with the Coast Guard if they can't figure out the difference between river sludge and oil? Not good. The other part of the ongoing problem with Big Oil is that they are on an honor code when it comes to reporting spills. As if they have any sense of honor. Now that Big Oil has been busted for blatantly telling a lie concerning this 30 mile oil slick, they need to pay a serious price. Will they or will it be another slap on the wrist?
Anglo-Suisse Offshore Partners issued a statement last night expressing "surprise" that what it claimed was a minor leak from a well that's been out of use for some time could have produced miles-long slicks that garnered national media attention. The company has been in the process of permanently plugging the well -- located in a shallow area about 30 miles southeast of Grand Isle, La. Anglo-Suisse owned a cluster of five platforms in that area that were destroyed by Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
According to the Times-Picayune's David Hammer, Anglo-Suisse has filed three incident reports with the Coast Guard since last Friday. In those documents, Hammer reports, the company explained that as it used a remotely operated submarine to plug the well, some oil had been discharged into the Gulf.
However, the company claimed in those reports that it had spilled less than five gallons of crude -- an amount far too small to account for the scope of the spill shown in aerial photographs. Nor would five gallons of crude square with reports of oil washing up over a 30 mile stretch of Louisiana's shoreline.
