They investigate a ship believed to have been responsible for the oil spill threatening two popular California resorts

The United States Coast Guard embarked on Thursday one huge german freighter as part of the investigation into the causes of the rupture of an oil pipeline which caused an oil spill off the coast of California the weekend.

According to data collected by a maritime navigation service, A huge freighter made a series of unusual movements when it was anchored at the nearest point of a Southern California oil pipeline, which erupted and caused an oil spill on the beaches.

The Coast Guard is examining whether a ship’s anchor could have snagged and bent the pipeline owned by Amplify Energy, a Houston-based company that operates three offshore platforms south of Los Angeles.

The agency PA reviewed over two weeks of data from Maritime traffic, a service that monitors radio signals from transponders, which show the location of large ships every few minutes.

Data show that the Rotterdam Express, a German-flagged vessel nearly 305 meters in length, has been assigned the SF-3 mooring, closest to the area where the pipeline ruptured, off Huntington Beach. The vessel made three unusual movements over two days that appeared to place it above the pipeline.

In a statement to PA On Thursday, Hapag-Lloyd, the company that operates the Rotterdam Express, confirmed that investigators boarded the ship while it was anchored in the port of Oakland on Wednesday. The company claims to have nothing to do with the spill.

“We are fully cooperating with the authorities at this timeSaid Nils Haupt, spokesperson for Hapag-Lloyd at the company’s headquarters in Hamburg, Germany.

A US official said on Wednesday PA that the Rotterdam Express had become the subject of the spill investigation. The official warned that the ship was only one of the leads followed in the case, which is in its preliminary stages.

Authorities were trying to collect data from Site and navigation of the ship that can help them identify its exact movements, the official said. They also wanted preliminary talks with at least part of the crew.

The official was unable to comment on the investigation publicly and spoke with PA on condition of anonymity.

Coast Guard spokesman Steve Strohmaier declined to comment on the Rotterdam Express, but said the agency was studying its vessel traffic service’s navigation systems to see which ships were at anchor or sailing in the spill area.

According to data from MarineTraffic, The Rotterdam Express arrived outside the port of Long Beach in the early morning hours of September 22 and anchored about 2,000 feet (610 meters) from the pipeline.

The next day, at around 5:00 p.m., the vessel’s location data indicated that while at anchor it had suddenly moved several hundred feet to the southeast, a direction that would have led it over the pipeline, located on the seabed about 30 meters (100 feet) deep. The vessel appears to have started its engines and returned to its anchorage approximately 10 minutes later.

The ship moved again around midnight and a third time shortly before 8 a.m. on September 23. and each time he returned to his assigned anchorage, according to his whereabouts data. The Rotterdam Express was on the SF-3 until Sunday, when it went to the port to unload.

The first report of crude oil in the water near the pipeline was on Friday evening. Amplify said the pipeline was closed on Saturday morning, but he didn’t estimate how long he thinks he was coming out of the rough.

Amplify CEO Martyn Willsher said on Tuesday that The divers had determined that a 4,000-foot (1,219-meter) section of the pipeline had shifted 32 meters (105 feet), twisted like a bowstring. Oil came out of a fine crack.

We didn’t know how many had fled. Amplify said in its public statements that no more than 476,962 liters (126,000 gallons), although he told federal investigators it could have been only 111,291 liters (29,400 gallons).

According to data from MarineTraffic, the vessel left Long Beach on Monday for the port of Oakland, where it was moored at the pier Wednesday evening.

(With AP information)

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