Louisiana often leads U.S. oil spill list

• By AMY WOLD
• Advocate staff writer
• Published: Jul 6, 2008 - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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The first oil sheen off Grand Isle was spotted June 26. The next day, a second oil sheen hit the island’s beach and closed a three-mile section for about a day. 

It’s estimated that the offshore sheen was caused by less than a gallon of oil and the beach was impacted by less than 42 gallons, said Lt. Commander Molly Wike, with the U.S. Coast Guard Marine Safety Unit in Morgan City.

The spills are still under investigation, and samples were taken  from the beach cleanup to be compared with samples from possible sources to see if a match can be found, Wike said. 

It’s a long process and could take several months to get results, she said. 

The two Grand Isle reports are the latest examples of something Louisiana sees a lot of — oil spills. 

Aging infrastructure and the volume of oil either produced or moved through Louisiana is part of the reason the state saw an average 1,500 reported oil spills a year between 1991 through 2004. 

That’s about four reported oil spills a day, most of which go unnoticed by the public. 

Between 1991 and 2004, reported oil spills in Louisiana involved between 91,000 gallons and 701,000 gallons a year. In percentages, Louisiana accounted for between 5.8 percent and 53.6 percent of the reported oil spill volume in the United States, according to the U.S. Coast Guard and the Louisiana Oil Spill Coordinator’s Office. 

Those are the spills reported in state waters and don’t account for reported spills in federal waters. In Louisiana, federal waters begin three miles from the coast.

“I’d say the biggest problem we have is old infrastructure. Old pipelines. Old pumps,” said Roland Guidry, oil spill coordinator with the Louisiana Oil Spill Coordinator’s Office. 

With the price of oil rising, companies are trying to get every drop of oil out of their wells, even the older ones, he said. 

 Jim Mullins, section chief in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Response Program for Region 6, agreed. 

Louisiana has had oil production for a long time and some   infrastructure is aging. This is  unlike California, where most oil production started in the mid-1940s and the infrastructure is newer, Mullins said.