I didn’t know thing one about this. I would have thought there would have been some mention of this at the time of the Deeprick blowout. I guess some (corporate) people really can keep secrets.

An oil spill you've never heard of could become one of the biggest environmental disasters in the US

CNN) In 2010, the Deepwater Horizon oil tragedy commanded the nation's attention for months. Eleven lives were lost and communities around the Gulf of Mexico ground to a halt under hundreds of millions of gallons of oil. Yet, lurking underneath the fresh disaster, an older spill was spewing ever faithfully forth: A leak that began when another oil platform was damaged six years earlier.

The Taylor oil spill is still surging after all this time; dumping what's believed to be tens of thousands of gallons into the Gulf per day since 2004. By some estimates, the chronic leak could soon be larger, cumulatively, than the Deepwater disaster, which dumped up to 176.4 million gallons (or 4.2 million barrels) of oil into the Gulf. That would also make the Taylor spill one of the largest offshore environmental disasters in US history.

In September, the Department of Justice submitted an independent study into the nature and volume of the spill that claims previous evaluations of the damage, submitted by the platform's owner Taylor Energy Co. and compiled by the Coast Guard, significantly underestimated the amount of oil being let loose. According to the filing, the Taylor spill is spewing anywhere from 10,000 to 30,000 gallons of oil a day.

As for how much oil has been leaked since the beginning of the spill, it's hard to say. An estimate from SkyTruth, a satellite watchdog organization, put the total at 855,000 to 4 million gallons by the end of 2017. If you do the math from the DOJ's filing, the number comes out astronomically higher: More than 153 million gallons over 14 years.

https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2018/10/23/us/taylor-energy-oil-largest-spill-di...

Taylor Energy (Site 23051) Cumulative Spill Report – 2017 Update
December 29, 2017/in Offshore, Watchdog /by Ry Covington

BACKGROUND

The Taylor Energy site perfectly captures the dysfunction of offshore oil development: In 2004, an underwater mudslide caused by Hurricane Ivan toppled one of the company’s platforms and buried the damaged wells attached to it on the seafloor. Reports of oil on the surface at the site of the wreckage followed shortly after and a secretive clean-up effort ensued.

In 2008, after several failed attempts to stop the leaks and Taylor Energy’s decision to sell off all of its income-generating oil and gas assets in the Gulf, federal regulators ordered the company to post a $666.3 million security bond to ensure there was enough money to plug the wells and clean up remaining pollution.

In 2010 and 2011, Taylor Energy used a leased drill rig called the Ocean Saratoga to slowly find and plug some of the damaged wells (only 9 of the 25 wells at the site have been plugged). Additionally, three underwater containment domes and an underwater collection and containment system were put in place at the wellhead area to try and capture any remaining oil.

Taylor Energy’s next step was to sue the government to try and recover more than $400 million from the trust they had set up previously. The lawsuit is in limbo amid negotiations over the company’s remaining responsibility and the feasibility of further clean-up. Documents filed by the Justice Department on December 15th revealed new evidence of two plumes of oil and gas resulting in an “ongoing oil release,” bringing some renewed hope Taylor Energy will be held accountable for its mess.

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Our initial report estimated the cumulative amount of oil that had leaked from the Taylor Energy site over the period 2004-2011. We’ve updated those calculations to include years 2012-2017, finding that:

Crude oil has been leaking continuously from this site for more than 13 years; and
The estimated cumulative volume of crude oil spilled into the Gulf of Mexico from this chronic leak over the period 2004 – 2017 now stands between 855,421 and 3,991,963 gallons.

https://www.skytruth.org/2017/12/taylor-energy-site-23051-cumulative-spi...

Collapsed Gulf oil platform has been leaking since 2004, investigation finds

OVER THE GULF OF MEXICO -- A blanket of fog lifts, exposing a band of rainbow sheen that stretches for miles off the coast of Louisiana. From the vantage point of an airplane, it's easy to see gas bubbles in the slick that mark the spot where an oil platform toppled during a 2004 hurricane, triggering what might be the longest-running commercial oil spill ever to pollute the Gulf of Mexico.

Yet more than a decade after crude started leaking at the site formerly operated by Taylor Energy Company, few people even know of its existence. The company has downplayed theleak's extent and environmental impact, likening it to scores of minor spills and natural seeps the Gulf routinely absorbs.

An Associated Press investigation has revealed evidence that the spill is far worse than what Taylor -- or the government -- have publicly reported during their secretive, and costly, effort to halt the leak. Presented with AP's findings, that the sheen recently averaged about 91 gallons of oil per day across eight square miles, the Coast Guard provided a new leak estimate that is about 20 times greater than one recently touted by the company.

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Five years ago, it took 87 days for BP to cap its blown-out Gulf well and halt the worst offshoreoil spill in the nation's history. The disaster, which killed 11 rig workers, exposed weaknesses in the industry's safety culture and gaps in its spill response capabilities.

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Whether it can profit from any industry innovations is debatable. The company sold all its offshore leases and oil and gas interests in 2008, four years after founder Patrick Taylor died.

Down to just one full-time employee, Taylor Energy exists only to continue fighting a spill that has no end in sight.