{"id":395495,"date":"2026-01-08T05:51:21","date_gmt":"2026-01-08T05:51:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/395495\/"},"modified":"2026-01-08T05:51:21","modified_gmt":"2026-01-08T05:51:21","slug":"record-9-6-million-fine-for-third-coast-after-substantial-oil-spill-in-the-gulf-of-mexico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/395495\/","title":{"rendered":"Record $9.6 million fine for Third Coast after substantial oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Pipeline safety regulators on Monday assessed their largest fine ever against the company responsible for leaking 1.1 million gallons of oil<\/a> into the Gulf off the coast of Louisiana in 2023. But the $9.6 million fine isn\u2019t likely to be a major burden for Third Coast to pay.<\/p>\n

This single fine is close to the normal total of $8 million to $10 million in all fines that the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration hands out each year. But Third Coast has a stake in some 1,900 miles of pipelines, and in September, the Houston-based company announced<\/a> that it had secured a nearly $1 billion loan.<\/p>\n

Pipeline Safety Trust Executive Director Bill Caram said this spill \u201cresulted from a company-wide systemic failure, indicating the operator\u2019s fundamental inability to implement pipeline safety regulations,\u201d so the record fine is appropriate and welcome.<\/p>\n

\u201cHowever, even record fines often fail to be financially meaningful to pipeline operators. The proposed fine represents less than 3% of Third Coast Midstream\u2019s estimated annual earnings,\u201d Caram said. \u201cTrue deterrence requires penalties that make noncompliance more expensive than compliance.\u201d<\/p>\n

The agency said Third Coast didn’t establish proper emergency procedures, which is part of why the National Transportation Safety Board found that operators failed to shut down the pipeline<\/a> for nearly 13 hours after their gauges first hinted at a problem. PHMSA also said the company didn’t adequately assess the risks or properly maintain the 18-inch Main Pass Oil Gathering pipeline.<\/p>\n

The agency said the company \u201cfailed to perform new integrity analyses or evaluations following changes in circumstances that identified new and elevated risk factors\u201d for the pipeline.<\/p>\n

That echoed what the NTSB said in its final report in June, that \u201cThird Coast missed several opportunities to evaluate how geohazards may threaten the integrity of their pipeline. Information widely available within the industry suggested that land movement related to hurricane activity was a threat to pipelines.\u201d<\/p>\n

The NTSB said<\/a> the leak off the coast of Louisiana was the result of underwater landslides, caused by hazards such as hurricanes, that Third Coast, the pipeline owner, failed to address despite the threats being well known in the industry.<\/p>\n

A Third Coast spokesperson said the company has been working to address regulators’ concerns about the leak, so it was taken aback by some of the details the agency included in its allegations<\/a> and the size of the fine.<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter constructive engagement with PHMSA over the last two years, we were surprised to see aspects of the recent allegations that we believe are inaccurate and exceed established precedent. We will address these concerns with the agency moving forward,” the company spokesperson said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Pipeline safety regulators on Monday assessed their largest fine ever against the company responsible for leaking 1.1 million…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":395496,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[49,48,295,167264,122851,122852,3241,2973,66,167266,167265],"class_list":["post-395495","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-environment","tag-hazardous-materials-safety-administration","tag-national-transportation-safety-board","tag-ntsb","tag-oil","tag-pipeline","tag-science","tag-the-pipeline","tag-third-coast"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395495","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=395495"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395495\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/395496"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=395495"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=395495"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=395495"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}