An edhat reader reports a lot of oil on the beach off Coal Oil Point in Isla Vista.
These photos were captured on Friday afternoon, May 15.
The reader reports, a “nasty oil mess at beach near Coal Oil point. The Snowy Plovers are doomed! Is this just seepage?”
From the Noozhawk article:
““At this time, the best indication is that these are natural seep events,” she said.”
“She added that oil operators are required to notify regulatory agencies when a spill happens, “regardless of volume, and no notifications have been received by county staff.”
Ok, so because the honest and never negligent oil operators didn’t notify the County of any leak, then it is “natural seepage.” I’m sure the determination is correct, but it does seem dubious that part of that determination relies on a company that’s been found negligent in the past and is currently in violation of local court orders now being honest and transparent.
I feel like we may need a better leak confirmation method in place.
Completely agree with this. The oil industry cannot be trusted to self-report their own mistakes.
ESPECIALLY Sable.
Thanks, Sable.
BEES – what’s your source?
Did the ocean floor just “naturally” open up and release this much oil?
Sable has absolutely nothing to do with natural seepage, or this for crying out loud.
Perhaps if oil extraction continued there would be less?
Oil extraction can significantly decrease natural seepage over time. By removing oil and gas from a reservoir, extraction drops the underground pressure that drives fluids and gases upward through natural faults and fissures. – UCSB
KAPO – prove it. Prove this is natural.
How about you prove this is caused by an oil rig? Go ahead, prove it.
BASICPUDDING – you see, I didn’t come here announcing that it was caused by an oil rig. Big difference. When soft-brained loudmouths barge in here proclaiming things are absolute fact, then it is up to the horsie behind the noise to back that with actual facts.
I know you don’t understand that though, as you’re the King of this type of foolishness.
Except for the fact that to get the remaining low-quality, viscous oil products out of the ground, the oilies have to pressurize their wells.
Hard to believe, but yes, natural seepage.
Hard to believe because it isn’t.
Probably another oil spill from a reckless oil company. Shut them all down!
FP – Are you all right? You actually just posted something of merit!
Do you drive? hypocrite much?
KAPO – do you fly kites? Grow plants in your garden? Exist outside? Well, you’re not allowed to if you oppose wind and solar.
Same stupid “logic.” Enough sounding dumb.
Not the same. You hate big oil, yet drive a car? That is hypocritical, ride a bike. Not an e-bike, but peddle.
If you are so opposed to oil, you should not be driving or using any petroleum based products, like your keyboard.
Your “logic” is flawed, if you oppose petroleum quit using it. Simple.
Why would you peddle your bike, if you want to keep it?
Why are oily cons so ignorant?
Again:
Soon to be a book: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/glennf/that-one-matt-bors-comic
“The strip identifies a rhetorical move that serves neoliberal ends: redirecting structural critique into questions of individual consistency. This strategy delegitimizes even modest calls for improvement. In other words, THIS ONE JERK deflates any effort at improvement by making a specious argument that nothing is possible if we engage in a system.”
Only profoundly stupid and/or dishonest people make this claim that it’s “hypocrisy” — which it clearly isn’t.
What about if I ride an E-bike and drive an electric car powered by my solar panels?
Nope, MM, according to KAPLAGIARIST’s 3rd grade “logic,” you can ONLY ride a pedal bike if you oppose offshore oil drilling.
Riding an e-bike would be a show of support for big oil because electric power is the same as gasoline when you’re reading/critical thinking level is the same as those who play pokemon on the playground at lunch.
No wonder the guy/gal can only rely on stealing other people’s words and presenting them as its own.
You must drive a gasser, and not think much.
This is famously one of the most stupid dishonest fallacious arguments ever made.
https://thenib.com/mister-gotcha/
Soon to be a book: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/glennf/that-one-matt-bors-comic
“The strip identifies a rhetorical move that serves neoliberal ends: redirecting structural critique into questions of individual consistency. This strategy delegitimizes even modest calls for improvement. In other words, THIS ONE JERK deflates any effort at improvement by making a specious argument that nothing is possible if we engage in a system.”
It’s called Coal Oil Point for a reason. The birds AND the oil have been out there way before humans arrived.
You have no idea what you’re saying. Stop pretending like you know anything about anything. We’re tired of it.
Birds in much larger quantities, oil in much lower quantities, in the past.
This is natural seepage, harming the environment. Do your homework, and stop being so emotional.
KEVIN – the only “emotional” ones are people like you, BASIC and KAPO and BEEs who are proven here on a daily basis to be wrong or just flat out lying.
You folks are clamoring to insist this is natural and there’s no possible way an already negligent company could have possibly allowed another leak, even if relatively small.
You don’t know the source of this. I don’t either. But to scream and cry “iT’S nAtURaL sEEpaGe!” is fallacious and just dumb. But go ahead, keep it up since we know you’ll never stop outing yourselves as what you really are.
Then why do you keep asking everyone to “again, prove that it’s natural seepage”? No one is “screaming and crying” about anything, except you. Some folks think it’s natural seepage, and others seem to claim that it’s an oil spill from an oil rig – with zero evidence. A few others won’t even say what they think because they can’t adequately express an actual opinion. Go figure.
BASIC – we all know you can’t read so let me help you: saying “Sable has absolutely nothing to do with natural seepage, or this for crying out loud” is not just thinking it might be natural, it’s proclaiming, stupidly, that it is without a doubt in fact natural.
I see this on Nextdoor too. People like you and Kapo who have trouble reading and being intellectually honest (or even capable) are insisting it can only be natural.
You’re just wrong, again, about what you think people are saying here.
It helps if you understand basic English.
Sable actually prevents that from happening, the needs to be drilled out to relieve pressure.
KEVIN – who caused the Refugio oil spill? Ok, enough said.
Aside from the fact that isn’t a sentence in English, there’s the fact that the oilies have to pressurize their wells to get the remaining low quality, viscous oil.
Blaming the oil companies when there’s a bit of oil on the beach from natural seepage only works to their advantage. Natural oil seepage in the Coil Oil Point area is estimated to be 50 to 150 barrels per day. At 48 gallons per barrel, that’s 2,400 to 7,200 gallons naturally seeping locally into our coastal water system. Think of seepage as “burps”….sometimes there are small releases (burps) and sometimes there are larger releases. This event appears to have been more of a belch. Been happening for thousands of years and will continue long after we force greedy Big Oil out of here (GOO).
BEES – once again, prove this is natural.
Many locals, real locals, including myself have seen natural seepage – sheens in the water here and there and sometimes more tar balls than normal. This though? This is a sudden and MUCH larger presence of oil.
When you consider we have a recently (forced, despite court orders to the contrary) open pipeline maintained by a company that has already proven themselves negligent in this area, it’s not a far stretch to think this is a leak of some kind and not, as the usual MAGAts and 1/2wits here contend, just another day in Goleta.
Because bends knees expels so much flatulence here, he thinks the ocean does, too.
Seeps release oil relatively slowly, resulting in ocean sheen and tarballs. They don’t generally cause a blanket of oil across a beach, but I suppose there could be exceptions.
I was a Snowy Plover docent at Coal Oil Point for 17 years. In all that time I never saw any tar anywhere near as extensive as that shown in the photo for this article (except for the tar that washed ashore after the Plains Pipeline rupture in 2015).
precursor to an earthquake?
Slobbovian underground nuclear detonation?
Planetary alignment?
Cosmic rift?
Filmore has been having a dense earthquake swarm over the last 2 weeks. You are against the possibility the oil deposits are connected? Really narrow view of possibilities beyond automatically blaming big oil.
So the improbable is more probable than the probable? No, thanks.
To y’all who do not think the seepage is natural; the Chumash have used the tar from the natural seepage to waterproof their Tomol for centuries. Seepage quantities expand and contract as the earth’s continues to move! I hope y’all are wearing cotton, silk, and wool. Oh yeh, and DIno Fuel was like used in the creation of such materials.
GETTHE – I see you trying to act smart again, so let’s put a stop to that. Just because the Chumash used natural occurring tar does not in any way whatsoever prove that this particular oil is naturally seeping.
And again, the “you can’t oppose oil drilling off our coast if you wear clothes or drive to work” argument is absolutely, completely illogical and debunked.
Try again.
> To y’all who do not think the seepage is natural
SO MANY logical fallacies in your comment, starting here with petitio principii (assuming your conclusion), attacking a strawman, and affirmation of the consequent
We know there is natural seepage; we know that the Chumash used tar. That has no bearing on whether this oil is the result of natural seepage.
And again: https://thenib.com/mister-gotcha/
Why do you oily cons have so much trouble communicating in English?
That’s some great sealant for the tomols and baskets!
If this was an oil spill from a rig it would’ve been platform Holly, the only one anywhere near there. Guess what – it hasn’t been operating for many years. Why would an inactive, decommissioned platform have a big oil spill? It wouldn’t. But hey, if it did, why wouldn’t we be seeing evidence – photos, videos – of oil spilling from it from local and state officials and the media? Or hey, if it was a spill from any of the other rigs way farther offshore that would be easy to document. It surely would be big news for the anti-oil folks. Reason – there is no “oil spill”. Natural seepage. Heavy at times. Get used to it.
So oil doesn’t drift from any other sources, say to the North a few miles where the platforms Sable l’s line is servicing? And there’s no oil washing up on northern beaches?
No way there’s any possibility, right?
You’ve never been wrong about anything, right?
Absolutes are the tool of the arrogantly stupid.
Well at least he offered something resembling a fact-based argument … but it’s not conclusive.
His/Her argument is based on the premise that this oil could only be from Holly and not a leak from the Santa Ynez pipeline up the coast owned by an already proven negligent company.
A lot of people are insisting that this can only be natural because there’s no “oil spill” at Holly, which entirely ignores any other possibility of man-caused oil seepage along the coast.
Again the all or nothing folks fail at critical thinking.
Ok, then go find this alleged pipeline leak. It should be easy to find. Send Salud’s crew, Krop’s warriors, or maybe Heal the Ocean out there to identify it and blame “big oil” as they say. This is a perfect opportunity for them. I wonder why they haven’t and it’s just you ranting about Sable this and Sable that…
BASIC – once again you prove your inability to read. I have only, all along, said it COULD be. I never once said it is absolutely a leak or an oil spill, unlike you MAGAts who bumbled in from the get go, with NO FACTS, calling it natural seepage and verbally assaulting anyone who dared to question that.
You would truly have to be excruciatingly ignorant to think there is ONLY ONE way there could ever be oil washing up on our shore.
Thanks for proving that every day here.
Slow underwater leaks from submerged pipelines are the same thing as oil spills from platforms if you’re dumb enough to believe that.
Wasn’t there a recent fire on platform Habitat?
According to Noozhawk. the Tar, Oil Spotted Along Beaches Near UCSB From ‘Natural Seep Events’
All you TDS infected people rushing to judgment before having any facts should go to Coal Oil Point with your protest signs saying “I’m a Dumbass”
LMAO
SAIL – this has nothing to do with TDS other than it’s the poorly educated, mindless Trump supporters that also think they’re all ocean ecology experts.
How about you shut the hell up about “rushing to judgment,” when EACH of you MAGAts came here immediately to say there was no other possibility other than it wasn’t natural seepage. I don’t see many comments saying it was, without doubt, an oil spill or leak with that level of blind instintence.
Go ahead and gloat about your little “win” here or whatever you think it is, but don’t forget what you and others wrote.
Literally no one but you has mentioned Trump–I guess you caught that nasty old TDS.
Hey, since you want to talk about Trump at every opportunity, real question–what do you think of Trump “settling” a case against us, I mean, our government, and stealing 1.7 billion dollars of OUR MONEY to create a slush fund to pay off his cronies, followers and supporters?
Come on Sail–really, what do you think of that? Let’s have a big boy conversation.
Not an option for someone like silly380 with Trump Deification Syndrome.
Sail – you voted for and defend a child r****t and his cronies that are robbing the country blind.