LOS ANGELES (AP) — A Houston-based oil company and two subsidiaries were indicted Wednesday for a crude spill that fouled Southern California waters and beaches in October, an event prosecutors say was caused in part by failing to properly act when alarms repeatedly alerted workers to a pipeline rupture.

Amplify Energy Corp. and its companies that operate several oil rigs and a pipeline off Long Beach were charged by a federal grand jury with a single misdemeanor count of illegally discharging oil.

Investigators believe the pipeline was weakened when a cargo ship’s anchor snagged it in high winds in January, months before it ultimately ruptured Oct. 1, spilling up to about 25,000 gallons (94,600 liters) of crude oil in the ocean.

U.S. prosecutors said the companies were negligent six ways, including failing to respond to eight leak detection system alarms over a 13-hour period that should have alerted them to the spill and would have minimized the damage. Instead, the pipeline was shut down after each alarm and then restarted, spewing more oil into the ocean.

Amplify blamed the unnamed shipping company for displacing the pipeline and said workers on and offshore responded to what they believed were false alarms because the system wasn’t functioning properly. It was signaling a potential leak at the platform where no leak was occurring, the company said.

The leak, in fact, was from a section of undersea pipe 4 miles (6.4 kilometers) miles away, Amplify said.

“Had the crew known there was an actual oil spill in the water, they would have shut down the pipeline immediately,” the company said.

The Associated Press first reported last week that Amplify’s leak detection system was not fully functional. At the time, the company declined to explain what that meant.

AP in October reported on questions surrounding the company’s failure to respond to an alarm.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Coast Guard said Wednesday that it was responding to a report of a sheen off the coast of Bolsa Chica State Beach but hadn’t determined the source and planned to fly over the scene Thursday morning.

The area is in the same general vicinity as that of the October leak, although the pipeline currently is out of service.

In that case, the first pipeline rupture alarm sounded at 4:10 p.m. Oct. 1, but the leak was not discovered until well after sunrise the next morning and reported about 9 a.m. Citizens on shore called 911 to report the strong smell of crude that first afternoon, and an anchored cargo vessel reported seeing a large sheen on the water before sunset.

Local authorities who went looking for a spill Oct. 1 didn’t find it. The Coast Guard said it was too dark to go out and search for the spill by the time they received a report about it. They went out after sunrise, finding it around the time the company reported it.

Just days after the spill, Amplify CEO Martyn Willsher had refused to answer questions at news conferences about the timeline surrounding the spill and a report that an alarm at 2:30 a.m. Oct. 2 alerted controllers about a possible spill. He maintained the company didn’t learn of the spill until a boat saw a sheen on the water at 8:09 a.m. that morning.

Orange County Supervisor Katrina Foley said the indictment validates residents who had detected the spill a day earlier and reported it.

“It’s terrible that they basically lied to the community during the press briefings and caused people to believe that what they saw with their own eyes or smelled or knew was actually not true,” she said. “What we know now is that the company knew this, and the alarms went off like they were supposed to, and nobody did anything.”

Even after the eighth and final alarm sounded, the pipeline operated for nearly an hour in the early morning, prosecutors said.

Pipeline safety advocate Bill Caram said the indictment paints a picture of a reckless company.

“I understand there are false positives on leak detection systems but this is our treasured coastline,” said Caram, director of the Bellingham, Washington-based Pipeline Safety Trust. “The fact that they kept hitting the snooze button and ignoring alarms, stopping and starting this pipeline and all the while leaking oil in the Pacific Ocean is reckless and egregious.”

Prosecutors also found that the pipeline was understaffed and the crew was fatigued and insufficiently trained in the leak detection system.

The indictment’s description of company personnel as fatigued pointed to a long-standing industry problem, said pipeline expert Ramanan Krishnamoorti with the University of Houston.

“Fatigue and overworked staff is old and trite and inexcusable,” he said. “This has been demonstrated over and over again as being the single most important vulnerability.”

It’s not clear why it took so long for the 1/2-inch (1.25-centimeter) thick steel line to leak after the apparent anchor incident, or whether another anchor strike or other incident led to the rupture and spill.

The spill came ashore at Huntington Beach and forced about a weeklong closure of the city’s beaches and others along the Orange County coast. Fishing in the affected area resumed only recently, after testing confirmed fish did not have unsafe levels of oil toxins.

If convicted, the charge carries up to five years of probation for the corporation and fines that could total millions of dollars.

___

Brown reported from Billings, Montana. Associated Press reporter Amy Taxin contributed.

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LOS ANGELES (AP) — A Houston-based oil company and two subsidiaries were indicted Wednesday for a crude spill that fouled Southern California waters and beaches in October, an event federal prosecutors say was caused by a series of negligent acts that led to an hours-long leak despite alarms that should have alerted workers to a pipeline rupture.

Amplify Energy Corp. and its two companies that operate three oil rigs and a pipeline off Long Beach each were charged by a federal grand jury with a single misdemeanor count of illegally discharging oil.

Investigators believe the pipeline was weakened when a cargo ship’s anchor snagged it in high winds in January, months before it ultimately ruptured Oct. 1, spilling up to about 25,000 gallons (94,600 liters) of crude oil in the ocean.

The indictment said the companies were negligent six ways, including failing to respond to eight leak detection system alarms over a 13-hour period that should have alerted them to the spill and would have minimized the damage. Instead, the pipeline was shut down after each alarm and then restarted, spewing more oil into the ocean.

Amplify said in a statement that workers onshore and offshore responded to what they believed were false alarms. The system wasn’t functioning properly because it was signaling a potential leak at the platform where no leak was occurring, the company said.

The leak, in fact, was from a section of undersea pipe 4 miles (6.44 kilometers) miles away, Amplify said.

“Had the crew known there was an actual oil spill in the water, they would have shut down the pipeline immediately,” the company said.

The Associated Press first reported last week that Amplify’s leak detection system was not fully functional. At the time, the company declined to explain what that meant.

The first alarm sounded at 4:10 p.m. Oct. 1, but the leak was not discovered until well after sunrise the next morning and reported about 9 a.m. Citizens on shore called 911 to report the strong smell of crude that first afternoon, and an anchored cargo vessel reported a large sheen on the water before sunset.

Local authorities who went looking for a spill Oct. 1 didn’t find it. The Coast Guard said it was too dark to go out and search for the spill by the time they received a report about it. They went out after sunrise, finding it around the time the company reported it.

Even after the eighth and final alarm sounded, the pipeline operated for nearly an hour in the early morning, prosecutors said. Prosecutors said the pipeline was understaffed and crew had not been sufficiently trained in the leak detection system and were fatigued.

It’s not clear why it took so long for the 1/2-inch (1.25-centimeter) thick steel line to leak after the apparent anchor incident, or whether another anchor strike or other incident led to the rupture and spill.

But experts said a properly functioning leak detection system might have been able to catch things that were amiss before an oil sheen spotted on the surface led to the leak’s discovery.

The indictment’s description of company personnel as fatigued pointed to a long-standing industry problem that pipeline expert Ramanan Krishnamoorti with the University of Houston said was “inexcusable.”

“Fatigue and overworked staff is old and trite and inexcusable,” he said. “This has been demonstrated over and over again as being the single most important vulnerability.”

The spill came ashore at Huntington Beach and forced about a weeklong closure of the city’s beaches and others along the Orange County coast. Fishing in the affected area resumed only recently, after testing confirmed fish did not have unsafe levels of oil toxins.

If convicted, the charge carries up to five years of probation for the corporation and fines that could total millions of dollars.

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U.S. Coast Guard Lt. Commander Jeannie Shaye said officials have signed off 190 miles (306 kilometers) of shoreline out of 251 miles (404 kilometers). Workers have scoured beaches for tar since an undersea pipeline leaked about 25,000 gallons (94,635 liters) of oil into the Pacific Ocean in early October.

The cleanup of the remaining segments of shoreline in Orange and San Diego counties is also near completion, she said, adding that there’s an extensive review process for officials to determine it’s done.

“For the most part, we’re in the final stages,” she said.

The announcement comes as California fish and wildlife officials on Tuesday reopened fishing along the coast.

Environmental advocates initially feared the worst when they learned on Oct. 2 about the spill from the pipeline owned by Houston-based Amplify Energy, which ferries crude from three offshore platforms to the coast. But the impact on sensitive wetland areas and wildlife has been less severe than anticipated, with Coast Guard officials saying much of the oil appeared to break up at sea.

The cause of the spill is under investigation. Federal officials have said the pipeline was likely initially damaged by a ship’s anchor.

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HUNTINGTON BEACH, Calif. (AP) — Surfers and swimmers returned to the waves Monday at a popular Southern California beach that was shut for more than a week after an undersea pipeline leaked crude oil into the ocean.

The reopening of Huntington Beach — dubbed “Surf City USA” — came far sooner than many expected after a putrid smell blanketed the coast and blobs of crude began washing ashore.

City and state park officials decided to reopen the shoreline in Huntington Beach after water quality tests revealed no detectable levels of oil-associated toxins in the ocean. That was good enough for Andrew Boyack, a 54-year-old commercial photographer, who usually surfs the waves in his hometown three or four times a week but has stayed out since the spill.

“There’s lots of guys out, so I figure it’s probably alright, and I guess they tested it,” Boyack said, while rinsing off at an outdoor beach shower.

“It’s exercise. It’s like, you know, if somebody was a jogger or something. We surf every morning.”

This surf-loving city of 200,000 people and nearby coastal communities have been reeling from the spill. The ocean has been closed, a popular air show canceled, fisheries shuttered and local shops have been walloped. The environmental impact on sensitive wetland habitats has been less severe than initially feared, but advocates say they are concerned about the long-term effects of the spill.

The shoreline in nearby Newport Beach also was reopened Monday after water quality testing revealed no unhealthful levels of oil-related toxins, said John Pope, a city spokesman.

Coast Guard officials said a pipeline owned by Houston-based Amplify Energy that shuttles crude from offshore platforms to the coast leaked at least about 25,000 gallons (95,000 liters) and no more than 132,000 gallons (500,000 liters) of crude oil into the ocean.

The spill was confirmed on Oct. 2, a day after residents reported a petroleum smell in the area. Officials have said the cause remains under investigation, and they believe the pipeline was likely damaged by a ship’s anchor several months to a year before it ruptured.

On an overcast Monday, a handful of people played volleyball and residents walked, jogged and biked on a path along the beach. Surfers in wetsuits jogged to the shore carrying their boards, eager to return to the waves, some after being shooed away over the weekend by lifeguards on jet skis.

Still, there were far fewer people in the ocean than usual, said Sean Rinehart, a 49-year-old surf instructor and chef from Huntington Beach. Rinehart headed out to surf but said he decided not to go in after the smell of dead fish near the pier gave him pause. The last time he surfed was Oct. 2, when he said he wound up in an oil slick. His skin, even now, is still itching, he said.

“I want to go in, but no way,” he said.

In Huntington Beach, shops selling everything from bikinis to stars-and-stripes boogie boards to sand toys and fishing gear have taken an economic hit since the spill. Shop owners hope business will bounce back quickly, but they fear it could take longer.

The sand looked clear near the pier, and there was no smell of oil. Workers in hazmat suits tasked with removing oily blobs continued to comb the sand.

Matt Harty, a 61-year-old retired construction supervisor from the nearby community of Seal Beach, said he was glad to return to the waves in Huntington Beach with other early morning surfers. He said he has seen oil spills before and this one didn’t seem that bad, and in fact, the beach looks great.

“This is the cleanest I’ve seen the beach in years, right, because there’s been nobody here for a week,” Harty said. “I think they cleaned it up really well.”

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HUNTINGTON BEACH, Calif. (AP) — The Coast Guard received the first report of a possible oil spill off the Southern California coast more than 12 hours before a company reported a major leak in its pipeline and a cleanup effort was launched, records show.

Oil spill reports reviewed Monday by The Associated Press raise questions about the Coast Guard’s response to one of the state’s largest recent spills and about how quickly Amplify Energy, the company operating three offshore platforms and the pipeline, recognized it had a problem and notified authorities.

Two early calls about the spill came into the National Response Center, which is staffed by the Coast Guard and notifies other agencies of disasters for quick response. The first was from an anchored ship that noticed a sheen on the water. The second came six hours later from a federal agency that said a possible oil slick was spotted on satellite imagery, according to reports by the California Office of Emergency Services.

The spill sent up to 126,000 gallons (572,807 liters) of heavy crude into the ocean off Huntington Beach, and it then washed onto miles of beaches and a protected marshland. The beaches could remain closed for weeks or longer, a major hit to the local economy. Coastal fisheries in the area are closed to commercial and recreational fishing.

Federal and state authorities require rapid reporting of a spill. Failure to do so has led to criminal prosecutions of companies, including Plains All American Pipeline, which caused a coastal spill near Santa Barbara in 2015, and Southern California Gas Co. for a massive well blowout later that year.

Meanwhile, Coast Guard officials said Monday that investigators were looking into whether a ship’s anchor may have struck a pipeline on the ocean floor.

Amplify Energy CEO Martyn Willsher said company divers were inspecting the area of the suspected leak reported Saturday, and he expected that by Tuesday there would be a clearer picture of what caused the damage. Willsher said an anchor from a cargo ship striking the pipeline is “one of the distinct possibilities” behind the leak.

Cargo ships entering the twin ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach routinely pass through the area. Backlogs have plagued the ports in recent months, and several dozen or more of the giant vessels have regularly been anchored as they wait to enter the ports and unload.

Signs were posted Tuesday in Huntington Beach declaring that the beach was open but the ocean and shore were closed. On a typical day, surfers would usually be seen bobbing in the waves but not now. Huntington State Beach still had an oily smell, although it was less severe than the stench emanating from the water on Sunday.

Experts say it’s too early to determine the spill’s full impact on the environment, but so far the number of animals found harmed is minimal.

David Pettit, senior attorney for Natural Resources Defense Council who worked on the Deepwater Horizon response and other spills, said damage assessment will require biologists to study multiple factors.

“There’s going to be huge response costs the company will be liable for,” he said. “At some point, the incident commanders are going to give the guilty party a paper with a bill on it.”

Pettit said many local businesses will have claims against the company for loss of resources, including loss of beach use by residents. “There are people who can put an economic value on this, and you multiply it by the number of people who would have gone but didn’t,” he said.

Coast Guard Lt. Cmdr. Jeannie Shaye said the Coast Guard was not notified of the disaster until Saturday morning, though records show its hazardous spill response hotline received the first report of a possible oil slick Friday evening.

A foreign ship anchored off the coast witnessed an “unknown sheen in the water near their vessel” at 6:13 p.m. and the report was called into the response center just after 8:22 p.m., according to the state report.

Lonnie Harrison Jr., vice president of Colonial Compliance Systems Inc., which works with foreign ships in U.S. waters to report spills, said one its clients reported the sighting.

Harrison, a retired Coast Guard captain, said the ship was not involved in the spill and was later given clearance over the weekend to enter the port to refuel after determining it was not contaminated by the slick.

About six hours after the first report was received, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported that satellite imagery spotted a possible oil slick more than 3 miles (5 kilometers) long. The report by the National Response Center said the image of a “possible oil anomaly” was probably associated with the first report.

“Although there were numerous vessels within immediate proximity to the anomaly, none were clearly associated with the anomaly,” the report said. “These factors prevented the possible identification of a point source.”

The company that operates the pipeline first reported the spill to the Coast Guard’s response center at 8:55 a.m. Saturday. However, the report said the incident occurred at 2:30 a.m.

A 2016 spill response plan for the Amplify platforms submitted to federal regulators called for immediate notification of federal officials when more than one barrel of oil is released into the water. Releases greater than five barrels — or that threaten state waters or the shoreline — require immediate notification of the state fire marshal and California wildlife officials.

The pipeline was supposed to be monitored under an automated leak detection system that would report problems to a control room staffed around the clock on the oil platform known as Elly.

The system was designed to trigger an alarm whenever a change in the flow of oil is detected. But how fast it can pick up on those changes was expected to vary according to the size of the leak. For a large leak — 10% or more of the amount of oil flowing through the pipeline — the detection time was estimated at five minutes. Smaller leaks were expected to take up to 50 minutes to detect, according to the response plan.

The spill plan warned that a break in the pipeline could cause “substantial harm to the environment” and that in a worst-case scenario 3,111 barrels (131,000 gallons) of oil could be released from the pipeline.

Willsher said required agencies were notified “instantly” when the company recognized the leak was from its pipe. Records show the spill was not reported by Amplify Energy, but by Witt O’Brien’s, a crisis and emergency management firm listed on the spill response plan as the point of contact to notify the NRC.

The report said the leaking pipe had been shut off, but containment was not confirmed.

Potential criminal investigations were being pursued by the Orange County district attorney, the U.S. Department of Justice, the Coast Guard and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, officials said.

Safety advocates have pushed for years for federal rules that would strengthen oil spill detection requirements and force companies to install valves that can automatically shut down the flow of crude in case of a leak. The oil and pipeline industries have resisted such requirements because of the high cost.

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HUNTINGTON BEACH, Calif. (AP) — The company that operates the pipeline suspected in one of California’s largest oil spills has been cited 72 times for safety and environmental violations that were severe enough that drilling had to be curtailed or stopped to fix the problem, regulatory records show.

In all, Beta Operating Co. has been cited 125 times since 1980, according to a database from the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, the federal agency that regulates the offshore oil and gas industry. The online database provides only the total number of violations, not the details for each incident.

The company was fined a total of $85,000 for three incidents. Two were from 2014, when a worker who was not wearing proper protective equipment was shocked with 98,000 volts of electricity, and a separate incident when crude oil was released through a boom where a safety device had been improperly bypassed.

Beta, which is a subsidiary of Houston-based Amplify Energy, is under scrutiny after a suspected leak in an underwater pipeline sent 126,000 gallons (572,807 liters) of heavy crude into the ocean waters, fouling the sands of famed Huntington Beach and other coastal communities. The spill could keep beaches closed for weeks or longer.

Environmentalists had feared the oil might devastate birds and marine life in the area. But Michael Ziccardi, a veterinarian and director of the Oiled Wildlife Care Network, said only four oily birds had been found so far. One suffered chronic injuries and had to be euthanized, he said.

“It’s much better than we had feared,” he said at a news conference Monday.

Ziccardi said he’s “cautiously optimistic,” but it’s too soon to know the extent of the spill’s effect on wildlife. In other offshore oil spills, the largest number of oiled birds have been collected two to five days after the incident, he said.

Amplify operates three oil platforms about 9 miles (14.5 kilometers) off the coast of California, all installed between 1980 and 1984. The company also operates a 16-inch pipeline that carries oil from a processing platform to an onshore storage facility in Long Beach. The company has said the oil appears to be coming from a rupture in that pipeline about 4 miles (6.44 kilometers) from the platform.

Before the spill, Amplify had high hopes for the Beta oil field and was pouring millions of dollars into upgrades and new “side track” projects that would tap into oil by drilling laterally.

“We have the opportunity to keep going for as long as we want,” Amplify CEO Martyn Willsher said in an August conference call with investors. He added there was capacity “up to 20,000 barrels a day.”

Investors shared Willsher’s optimism, sending the company’s stock up more than sevenfold since the beginning of the year to $5.75 at the close of trading on Friday. The stock plunged more than 40% in morning trading Monday.

The company filed for bankruptcy in 2017 and emerged a few months later. It had been using cash generated by the Beta field and others in Oklahoma and Texas to pay down $235 million in debt.

Some residents, business owners and environmentalists questioned whether authorities reacted quickly enough to contain the spill. People who live and work in the area said they noticed an oil sheen and a heavy petroleum smell Friday evening.

Booms were deployed on the ocean surface Sunday to try to contain the oil while divers sought to determine where and why the leak occurred. On land, there was a race to find animals harmed by the oil and to keep the spill from harming any more sensitive marshland.

But it was not until Saturday afternoon that the Coast Guard said an oil slick had been spotted and a unified command established to respond. And it took until Saturday night for the company to shut down the pipeline.

Rick Torgerson, owner of Blue Star Yacht Charter, said on Friday evening “people were emailing, and the neighbors were asking, ‘Do you smell that?’” By Saturday morning, boats were returning to the marina with their hulls covered in oil, he said.

Garry Brown, president of the environmental group Orange County Coastkeeper, decried a lack of initial coordination among the Coast Guard and local officials in dealing with the spreading oil slick.

“By the time it comes to the beach, it’s done tremendous damage. Our frustration is, it could have been averted if there was a quick response,” said Brown, who lives in Huntington Beach.

Some of the oil washed up on the shores of Orange County. The city and state beaches at Huntington Beach were closed, and late Sunday the city of Laguna Beach, just to the south, said its beaches also were closed.

Huntington Beach Mayor Kim Carr said the beaches of the community nicknamed “Surf City” could remain closed for weeks or even months. The oil created a miles-wide sheen in the ocean and washed ashore in sticky black globules.

“In a year that has been filled with incredibly challenging issues, this oil spill constitutes one of the most devastating situations that our community has dealt with in decades,” Carr said. “We are doing everything in our power to protect the health and safety of our residents, our visitors and our natural habitats.”

Amplify CEO Martyn Willsher said the pipeline and the company’s three platforms were shut down Saturday night. The 17.5-mile (28.16-kilometer) pipeline that is 80 to 100 feet (24 to 30 meters) below the surface was suctioned out so no more oil would spill while the location of the leak was being investigated.

Crews led by the Coast Guard-deployed skimmers laid some 3,700 feet (1,128 meters) of floating barriers known as booms to try to stop more oil from seeping into areas including Talbert Marsh, a 25-acre (10-hectare) wetland officials said.

The oil will likely continue to wash up on the shore for several days and could affect Newport Beach and other nearby communities, officials said.

The spill comes three decades after a massive oil leak hit the same stretch of Orange County coast. On Feb. 7, 1990, the oil tanker American Trader ran over its anchor off Huntington Beach, spilling nearly 417,000 gallons (1.6 million liters) of crude. Fish and about 3,400 birds were killed.

In 2015, a ruptured pipeline north of Santa Barbara sent 143,000 gallons (541,313 liters) of crude oil gushing onto Refugio State Beach.

The area affected by the latest spill is home to threatened and endangered species, including a plump shorebird called the snowy plover, the California least tern and humpback whales.

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