The Taylor Energy Co. oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico began dumping gallons of pollution into the sea in 2004 — some six years before the Deepwater Horizon accident.
According to a September filing by the Department of Justice, Taylor “is spewing anywhere from 10,000 to 30,000 gallons of oil a day,” CNN reported. Based on that assessment, more than 153 million gallons of oil may have spilled into the Gulf over the last 14 years.
The Taylor spill was a side effect of 2004’s Hurricane Ivan. An oil platform belonging to the company was damaged during a mudslide and sank, undetected, into the ocean. Local Gulf Coast residents began seeing the effects of the spill around 2010, after the BP catastrophe.
“In 2010, nobody really knew,” executive director of the Louisiana Environmental Action Network (LEAN), Marylee Orr, told the news site. “And maybe no one would know now, if there weren’t citizens and non-profit organizations who were just trying to be good stewards.”
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