Pipeline company to pay nearly $1M over California oil spill

HUNTINGTON BEACH, Calif. (AP) — The owner of an underwater oil pipeline that spilled some 25,000 gallons of crude into the ocean off Southern California will pay nearly $1 million in cleanup costs. The Orange County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday agreed to accept a proposed claim settlement with Amplify Energy Corp. over the costs of dealing with last October’s spill off Huntington Beach. The spill shuttered beaches for a week and fisheries for more than a month, oiled birds and threatened wetlands that Orange County communities have been striving to restore. Investigators believe the pipeline, which ferried crude from offshore oil platforms to the coast, was weakened when a cargo ship’s anchor snagged it in high winds in January, months before it ultimately ruptured.