Shipping Companies Agree To $45 Million Settlement With OC Residents Over Oil Spill Damages

On Thursday, multiple shipping companies agreed to pay Orange County residents whose businesses and property were damaged by the October 2021 Orange County oil spill.

The spill, first detected on October 1st, was caused by a 13-inch split in the pipeline. Officials believe that the pipeline that sprung the leak had likely been dragged for over 100 feet earlier this year by a container ship with its anchor down. The pipeline, which connects the Elly drilling platform off the coast to the Long Beach Harbor, then finally broke open, sending 3,000 barrels, or, 126,000 gallons, of post production crude oil into the ocean, becoming larger than other recent oil spills in California, such as the Refugio oil spill in Santa Barbara County in 2015.

The spill threatened area beaches for a week, with Governor Gavin Newsom declaring the spill a State of Emergency due to the ecological effects, on October 5th. While beaches reopened quickly, with most only staying closed around a week, the economic losses had been staggering, with federal disaster assistance for businesses beginning to come in in late October.

While cleanup efforts coordinated by the U.S. Coast Guard, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (DFW), and Orange and San Diego Counties continued, several environmental groups brought forth lawsuits against the federal government over not revising platform plans since the early 1980’s. At the same time, the federal government indicted Houston-based Amplify Energy Corp., and it’s two subsidiaries, Beta Operating Co. and San Pedro Bay Pipeline Co., over their role in the spill.

After cleanup ended at the end of 2021, multiple lawsuits popped up and were settled throughout 2022. The Orange County Board of Supervisors reached a $1 million settlement with Amplify in July 2022, followed by the energy company paying a further $12.9 million in fines and Coast Guard reimbursements in September 2022. Amplify then paid the largest amount, $50 million, in October to companies and property owners who had been hurt by the spill.

However, the shipping companies, whose ships either repeatedly crossed over and struck the pipeline months before or otherwise damaged the pipeline and it’s concrete casing, continued to refuse any kind of fault. Despite being named in a Federal District Court suit, Capetanissa Maritime Corporation, Costamare Shipping Co., S.A., V. Ships Greece Ltd., and the M/V Beijing (collectively, “Capetanissa”) and Doredellas Finance Corp., MSC Mediterranean Shipping Co., S.A., Mediterranean Shipping Co. S.r.l., MSC Shipmanagement Ltd., and MSC Danit (collectively, “Doredellas”) all denied the allegations.

A $45 million agreement

But, after moths of evidence building up, including the Capetanissa’s and Doredellas’ container ship vessels the MV Beijing and the MSC Danit being found to have struck the Amplify pipeline with their anchors multiple times in January 2021, the companies finally agreed to a $45 million settlement on Thursday. In addition, Capetanissa and Doredellas are also currently finalizing another settlement to prevent what they did from happening in the future.

Along wit the October settlement from Amplify, a combined total of nearly $100 million will now be going business owners and property owners harmed by the oil spill.

“Nobody deserves this more than the citizens of Orange County and the coastal community to have this matter resolved quickly,” said co-lead counsel for the plaintiffs Wylie Aitken, co-lead counsel for the plaintiffs on Thursday. “It is certainly a result the Orange County coastal community and our Orange County community overall can be proud of, and it sends a clear message to large corporations operating off the coast of California that they will be held responsible for their negligence.”

Amplify, who had until Thursday been paying all the settlements, also noted that they were satisfied with the shipping company settlement, noting that “We are pleased to see the ships that struck our pipeline take responsibility for the damages their negligence caused the community following this event.”

Residents of Huntington Beach were also happy with the settlement amount on Thursday.

“We got that energy company last year, and now we finally got those shipping companies,” explained Huntington Beach resident Omar Vazquez to the Globe. “Those ships damaged the pipeline over an over again, and the company failed to do much about it. They could have gotten away with some of it, but we all had pictures of the spill, and over head images were not kind. It’s hard to argue that you didn’t have much of an impact when we kept finding tar balls on the beach.”

Other settlements are expected to be agreed to throughout 2023, with the $45 million settlement expected to be finalized soon.