The Coast Guard is coming down hard on the owners of a broken oil platform that has been allowed to leak off southeast Louisiana for more than 14 years.
New federal estimates put the leak rate at the Taylor Energy Co. well at 10,500 gallons to 29,000 gallons of oil per day. That’s five to 13 times larger than government’s estimate from just a year ago, and would rank the Taylor Energy leak as one of the largest and longest-running oil spills in North America.
Last week, the Coast Guard directed Taylor Energy to decide on a new containment plan and a contractor to do the work. The new method of containment “must eliminate the surface sheen and avoid the deficiencies associated with prior containment systems,” the Coast Guard wrote in an administrative order. The company will be fined up to $40,000 per day for failing to comply.
Read more at the Times-Picayune
