A site 12 miles off the coast of Louisiana has been leaking between 300 and 700 barrels of oil daily for 14 years now since a drilling infrastructure owned by Taylor Energy was destroyed by Hurricane Ivan in 2004.
The site has been polluting the gulf coast with oil spill between 10,000 and 30,000 gallons daily. At the rate that it has been spewing oil to the ocean, it is set to surpass BP's Deepwater Horizon oil spill which has been the largest oil disaster ever for the United States, The Washington Post reported.
In comparison, the Deepwater Horizon disaster unloaded up to 176.4 million gallons or 4.2 million barrels of oil into the Gulf for 87 days in 2010. Two more years and without a specific plan from the government and Tyler Energy to fix the problem, the Louisiana site could then become the worst in U.S. history.
The Taylor Energy has kept a tight lid about the real magnitude of the problem to protect its industry reputation and proprietary information according to a lawsuit filed by the Interior Department first seen by The Post. The department is seeking the return of $450 million trusts Tyler Energy has established from the government. The amount shall be used to begin actual repairs for the wreckage.
While Taylor Energy has taken the necessary step to report the oil spill to the Coast Guard, it was only four years later that the Coast Guard identified the actual threat of the oil spill to the environment. During the initial reporting done by Taylor Energy, the company said the leak was at two gallons per day. Coast Guard found in 2008 that it was 84 gallons a day, coming from 16 malfunctioning wells.
A joint venture of South Korean companies acquired Tyler Energy in 2008, The Post reported. In the same year, the company established trust with the government to help clean up the spill. It was also ruled at the time that Tyler Energy should stop all production and oil drilling
The oil spill was largely unknown to the public until in 2010 when an environmental group discovered that the oil spill in the Gulf was not solely coming from the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster.
Finally, in September this year, the Justice Department presented an analysis done by geoscientist Oscar Garcia-Pineda that found the Louisiana oil spill has been leaking between 300 and 700 barrels of oil daily since 2004.
Overall, there are about 330,000 gallons of crude oil spilling each year in Louisiana from offshore platforms and onshore oil tanks. This was because the Gulf is one of the richest gas regions worldwide. The area accounted for 20 percent of the total oil production in the United States. On top of this, there remain to be 40 billion barrels of undrilled oil underground that has yet to recover, The Post said.
