Page 7 - Beta Field News Today

Orange County Supervisor Katrina Foley said a broken pipeline connected to an offshore oil platform known as Elly caused the spill.

Off shore. its not exactly around that platform. we actually jumped a little bit further. let me go back and show you where this is because this is important. theres an area called the beta field. the beta field is land that is owned by the u.s. department of the interior. it is then leased by these oil company. you will be able to see them here. sorry we got a little far head of ourselves. you will get an idea here. not sure were coming back to the same graphic. there is a pipeline that runs di...

Notice the boxed area offshore. this is the beta field. its in federal waters. you get closer to shore and its state waters. sit owned by u.s. department of the interior. this land is a huge reservoir for crude oil and it is then leased to these companies, such as beta operating company. elly is the main platform that does the most processing. the other platforms, extract crude, give it to elly. elly criss-crosses and is more to the left. so somewhere along this line, were not exactly sure where...

Were smelling gasoline fume. we hear right now its overwhelming. the reason for that, this is not raw crude that we saw getting extracted in the bp oil spill. this is mainly a post-pro duck oil and gas, so a lot of chemicals are added to it and therefore the fumes will be oppressive to the nose but makes it less dense so the sheen was first notified or noticed about 9:00 a.m. on saturday morning from the u.s. coast guard. you can see we have long beach to the far north left-hand corner. laguna b...

Anything that gets pushed onshore will be pushed a little bit further inland. you can look at history, theyve had a list of problems in this beta field. theyve been fined before for corroded pipes and things of that nature. in 1969, this was the worst, santa bar bra spill, 3 million, the worst until the exxon valdez and then bp again. a history of problems. you know theyre going to be talking about this in more depth not only in southern california but youll probably hear about it on capitol hil...

Down along the coastline, probably not as far as laguna beach, but show you where the complex is. these boxes are called the beta field, property owned by the u.s. department of the interior. this property is leased by these oil companies. were getting closer and you can see we have several of these oil rigs that begin with the letter "e," names, edith and elle here. this is the concern. the red lines that move toward the shore are pipe lines. this is as mentioned post-production oil. its not ra...