Contractor tries to control leaking oil well in Plaquemines Parish

An aerial image taken from an overflight on April 28, 2025, shows marsh affected by a leaking oil well near Garden Island Bay in southern Plaquemines Parish. The Coast Guard has implemented a safety zone in the area and crews have installed containment and absorbent boom to contain the oily liquids leaking from the Spectrum OpCo well that was drilled 82 years ago. The well was shut in in 2015.

Photo Provided by U.S. Coast Guard An aerial image taken from an overflight on April 28, 2025, shows marsh affected by a leaking oil well near Garden Island Bay in southern Plaquemines Parish.



The Coast Guard has implemented a safety zone in the area and crews have installed containment and absorbent boom to contain the oily liquids leaking from the Spectrum OpCo LLC well that was drilled 82 years ago. The well was shut in in 2015. Photo provided by U.

S. Coast Guard Facebook Twitter WhatsApp SMS Email Print Copy article link Save A contractor worked Monday to try to control an 82-year-old oil and gas well that is leaking in the marshes of southern Plaquemines Parish as response workers set up containment and absorbent boom to corral escaping hydrocarbons, the U.S.

Coast Guard said. Response crews had recovered 2,394 gallons of oily liquids leaked from the well into Garden Island Bay near the mouth of the Mississippi River, Coast Guard officials added. That's enough nearly to fill a 12-foot-diameter, above-ground swimming pool three feet deep, according to pool industry estimates.

The leak of oil and gas from Spectrum OpCo LLC's Garden Island Bay production facility was reported to the Coast Guard in New Orleans at 4 p.m. Saturday.

An overflight by an air crew from the Louisiana Oil Spill Coordinator's Office later confirmed the leak. Coast Guard officials have not described the size of the leak and added on Monday night that crews have not determined the flow rate of the leak or how much oily liquid has escaped from the well so far. The cause of the leak remains under investigation and there have been no reports or observations of affected wildlife, the Coast Guard said.

Well No. 59, now owned by Spectrum OpCo LLC, as seen on June 21, 2023, under different ownership during a state inspection. The 82-year-old well near Garden Island Bay in southern Plaquemines Parish began leaking oily material on Saturday, April 26, 2025.

During the inspection in 2023, the then-well owner was cited for a lack of signage but passed in all other respects, state records show. Spectrum OpCo LLC took ownership of the well and 291 other wells in Garden Island Bay from Whitney Oil and Gas LLC in August 2024, state oil and gas records show. Known as Well No.

59, the leaking oil well was among many that has changed hands several times through the years. Drilled in 1942, Well No. 59 was reworked in 1989 and 1994 in an attempt to access different oil-bearing zones thousands of feet underground but has been shut in since 2015, state oil and gas records show.

With the exception of missing signage in 2008 and 2023, the well had passed several state inspections during that period, state records show. Spectrum OpCo officials have not responded to a request for comment since Monday. The company has been deemed the responsible party and has formed a unified command with the Coast Guard and state Oil Spill Coordinator's Office to manage the response.

The company has hired response and other contractors under a state and federally approved plan. Since the discovery of the leak, the Coast Guard has restricted flights for up to 2,000 feet high within two miles of the leaking well as 100 response workers operated eight skimmers and deployed a variety of recovery storage equipment on Monday. Workers had also put out 4,300 feet of 18-inch-thick containment boom and 163 bales of absorbent boom to protect nearby islands, Coast Guard officials said.

Coast Guard officials added that 10,000 more feet of containment boom are on standby. Spectrum OpCo, a Delaware-based company with New York state ownership, is one of two companies with active wells in the Garden Island Bay field, state business and oil and gas records show. The company's management is in Houston, Texas.

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