Federal regulators have found fresh evidence of an “ongoing oil release” at the site of a 13-year-old oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico, where chronic sheens often stretch for miles off Louisiana’s coast, according to government lawyers.
In a court filing Friday, Justice Department attorneys said recent scientific surveys revealed two plumes of oil and gas flowing from where an underwater mudslide during Hurricane Ivan in 2004 toppled an offshore platform and buried the cluster of wells owned by Taylor Energy Corp.
The New Orleans-based company has repeatedly insisted there is no evidence that oil is seeping from any of its unplugged wells on the seafloor. The government’s court filing doesn’t address whether any of Taylor’s wells could be the source of the plumes.
“There is no evidence of an actively leaking well,” Taylor Energy spokesman Todd Ragusa said in a statement Monday.
Associated Press