Los Angeles Times News

Beaches in a southern California city that were shut because of an oil spill last week are set to reopen on Monday morning, authorities said in a statement.City and state beaches of Huntington Beach city will reopen as water quality testing showed no detectable amounts of oil associated toxins in ocean water, officials from the city and California State Parks said.Last week, some 3,000 barrels (126,000 gallons) of crude oil spilled into the Pacific Ocean, killing wildlife, soiling the coastline and forcing officials to close beaches in the cities of Huntington Beach…

A ship built by the CIA for a secret Cold War mission in 1974 to raise a sunken Soviet sub is heading to the scrap yard, a victim of the slide in oil prices. Christened the Hughes Glomar Explorer, after billionaire Howard Hughes was brought in on the CIA's deception, the 619-foot vessel eventually became part of the fleet of ships used by Swiss company Transocean to drill for oil. But the oil price rout means the former spy ship now called GSF Explorer is just one of 40 such offshore drilling rigs that have been consigned to scrap since last year.

Clean-up costs associated with a Californian oil pipeline rupture that dumped as much as 2,400 barrels of crude onto a pristine stretch of coastline and into the Pacific Ocean have exceeded $60 million, the Los Angeles Times reported on Wednesday. Plains All American Pipeline spokeswoman Meredith Mathews told the newspaper that expenses for restoring the affected area near Santa Barbara ran as high as $3 million a day. Mathews added that the total, which did not include financial damage claims from people or businesses that may have been affected by the spill, were likely to increase as clean-up efforts continued. Representatives for the pipeline did not immediately respond to requests from Reuters for comment.

The U.S. Coast Guard captain overseeing cleanup of oil spilled from a pipeline rupture that closed two California state beaches and fouled offshore waters near Santa Barbara said on Thursday it may take months to restore the area to its natural condition. Up to 2,500 barrels (105,000 gallons) of crude petroleum, according to latest estimates, gushed onto San Refugio State Beach and into the Pacific about 20 miles (32 km) west of Santa Barbara on Tuesday when an underground pipeline that runs along the coastal highway burst. As much as a fifth of the amount was believed to have reached the ocean, leaving oil slicks that stretched for more than 9 miles (15 km) along the coast.

Long Beach Ports, threatening holiday commerce and U.S. San Francisco, CA (November 6, 2014) – Escalating its use of orchestrated job actions that have already crippled terminal operations at Pacific Northwest ports, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) has now targeted the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach by unilaterally refusing to dispatch hundreds of qualified, skilled workers for critically important positions transporting containers in terminal yards at the nation’s largest port complex. On short notice, the Union informed the Pacific Maritime Association (PMA) that starting Monday, November 3rd, it would not dispatch qualified ILWU members…

A Mexican man convicted in the 2012 killing of a U.S. Coast Guard officer, the first on-duty death since 1927, was sentenced on Monday to life in federal prison without the possibility of parole, a newspaper reported. A federal jury had convicted 42-year-old Jose Meija-Leyva, of Ensenada, of second-degree murder, among other charges, in the death of Chief Petty Officer Terrell Horne III, the U.S. Attorney's office said in February. "The defendant had a choice to simply flee and attempt to evade capture, but chose to aggressively attempt to disable the Coast Guard small boat before making his getaway," prosecutors argued, according to the Los Angeles Times newspaper.

According to multiple media reports including The Sydney Morning Herald (smh.com.au) as well as Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, the the Russian Navy reportedly sank one of its own, junked vessels to create an obstacle, a Ukrainian official claimed. Ukraine Defense Ministry spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Alexei Mazepa was quoted as saying that Russian sailors pulled the anti-submarine vessel Ochakov out of a naval junkyard and sank it in the straits that connect the Black Sea with a body of water known as Donuzlav Lake. “The Russian Navy Ochakov Kara-class cruiser was sunk . . .

The U.S. Air Force will consider leasing land on Vandenberg Air Force Base for private companies to extract offshore oil and gas from the central California coast, according to a Los Angeles Times report. The proposal would allow oil companies to use onshore equipment with new extended reach “slant drilling” technology to access deposits several miles offshore. Sunset Exploration and Exxon Mobil recently asked the Air Force to revisit their proposal to use the technology to build an oil and gas drilling project on the base near Lompoc, explains the Los Angeles Times, citing an official source.

Coast Guard investigators working to determine what caused the destruction of the 37-foot sailboat off the Mexican coast, consider that there's a possibility that no eyewitnesses remain. All four crew members of the Aegean were killed. And based on the level of destruction — small pieces of the boat were found spread over a wide area — it may be no one aboard the much larger ship that's believed to have rammed the Aegean ever realized it, says the Los Angeles Times news report. Without discounting the likelihood of a collision, the Coast Guard noted that the last known position of the Aegean was close to a rocky shoreline on one of the Coronado Islands.

The Arleigh Burke-class destroyer Sterett, which took the lead in the failed U.S. attempt to rescue Americans from Somali pirates, is on its first active-duty cruise. But it has pirate-hunting in its legacy. The ship is named for one of the Navy's heroes in the long-ago fight with Barbary Coast pirates. As the U.S. Central Command sought to rescue four Americans held by Somali pirates this week, the Sterett was the closest of four Navy ships trailing the pirates.   (Source: The Los Angeles Times)

According to a Feb. 1 report from the Los Angeles Times, there will be no new ship-building and repair yard at the Port of Los Angeles at this time. The City Council voted to scuttle a $50m proposal by Gambol Industries to revive the former site of the Southwest Marine yard. The shipyard project was to create more than 1,000 jobs. The Board of Harbor Commissioners argued that the shipbuilding idea would interfere with a more urgent priority -- deepening the main channel at the port to accommodate a new generation of super-sized container vessels and keep the port globally competitive. (Source: Los Angeles Times)

According to a Jan. 14 report from the Los Angeles Times, Cruise line officials and port officials say the moves stem from the sour economy and continuing drug-related violence in Mexico. Royal Caribbean's Mariner of the Seas is leaving this month and Norwegian Cruise Lines' Norwegian Star is departing in May. (Source: Los Angeles Times)

According to a July 28 report from the Los Angeles Times, in response to a series of high-profile assaults and disappearances on cruise ships in recent years, President Obama signed into law tougher rules for reporting crimes at sea, improving ship safety and training ship staff on collecting assault evidence. The law requires lines to immediately report serious crimes to U.S. authorities and install peepholes on passenger stateroom doors, among other safety improvements. (Source: Los Angeles Times)

According to a June 1 report from the Los Angeles Times, the State Lands Commission lashed out at Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's attempt to reverse its rejection of the first new oil drilling in California waters since 1969. At a contentious hearing in Santa Monica, the commission passed a resolution urging legislators not to go along with Schwarzenegger's plan, which would revive a drilling project off the Santa Barbara County coast that the commission killed in January. (Source: Los Angeles Times)

On August 24, one of the world’s most profiled platforms turned 15. Sleipner, also known as the carbon dioxide (CO2) platform, does not look its age. Sleipner had a tough start. The construction of the first installation became one of the most dramatic in Norwegian oil history. Shortly before the deck and the concrete substructure for the Sleipner A platform were to be connected, the substructure sank to 200 metres depth in the Gands fiord. With good assistance from Norwegian Contractors…

A catastrophic release of liquefied natural gas from a terminal proposed off the Ventura County coast could spread a powerful and spectacular fireball over several miles, but pose no threat on land because the facility would be at least 14 miles offshore, a new study shows. The gas-processing plant, one of four proposed for Southern California, would convert fuel shipped from across the Pacific Ocean for use in Los Angeles-area factories and power plants. Such terminals operate around the world with a good safety record, yet the newly released analysis shows that the effect of a worst-case disaster would be significantly greater than identified when the project, called Cabrillo Port, was proposed nearly three years ago.

Despite opposition from state officials, the prospects have improved for a proposed $700-million liquefied natural gas terminal that would be built at the Port of Long Beach in California, according to a Los Angeles Times report. The Long Beach City Council has no immediate plans to take a stand on the project, and local opposition has dwindled in recent months. Even so, state Public Utilities Commission officials oppose siting a terminal in the densely populated harbor area, warning that a terrorist attack, earthquake or accident could cause catastrophic damage. A nationally known expert hired by the commission recently concluded a fire could kill or burn people within three miles, an area that includes downtown Long Beach and 130,000 residents, according to the report.

According to Xinhua the two ports here in the Los Angles area are poised to set records for container shipping volume this year thanks to ever-surging trade with China and new but impressive business with India, a report said Saturday. As of November, the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, which form the United States' largest seaport complex, were only a few thousand shipping containers short of the 13.1 million they handled all of last year, the Los Angeles Times reported. Officials said the ports will probably handle more than 14 million 20-foot equivalent units (TEUs), the maritime industry standard for cargo that is shipped in large containers, by the end of this year, with total volume exceeding that of the next four busiest U.S. ports combined.