New oil slick sighted near site of massive Calif. spill

GOLETA, Calif. -- The U.S. Coast Guard investigating new oil slick near the site of earlier spill at Santa Barbara.

Officials responded to oil sheen reported off the shore of Goleta Beach, according to the Coast Guard.

The oil was spotted Wednesday morning about 1,000 yards into the waters off Goleta and measured about 60 feet in width, the Coast Guard said, and about two miles long. But Santa Barbara County fire Capt. Dave Zaniboni said it was "very large" and its current size would be determined when a Coast Guard helicopter arrived to fly over it.

Zaniboni said firefighters responded Wednesday morning to reports of the smell of oil off the Goleta pier and firefighters spotted the slick. Two kayakers came ashore with oil on their watercraft and legs, he said.

The kayakers were otherwise unharmed, he said. Oil routinely appears in the local coastal waters from natural seeps. Zaniboni said the slick was unusually large but he refrained from calling it an oil spill because the source was undetermined. "

We're not calling it a spill, we're just saying it's unusually large," he said. The water at Goleta Beach was closed but people were allowed to stay at the beach park.

Most of the oil is in the water, but some has started washing up on area beaches, CBS News correspondent Carter Evans reported. It isot clear where it is coming from, it could be natural seepage as there is a lot of oil in the ground there.

But the slick has been spotted in the vicinity of an offshore oil rig owned by Venoco. The company applied for an emergency permit this week to remove oil from that platform. Venoco says there have been no incidents at its facilities.

A Marine Safety Detachment team will be investigating the sheen to determine a possible source, according to CBS Los Angeles. It is unclear if it is connected to the massive oil spill that took place May 19 at Refugio State Beach near Santa Barbara about 12 miles away.

That break spilled more than 100,000 gallons of crude, including 21,000 gallons that flowed into the ocean. It was later blamed on a privately owned crude oil pipeline that leaked and caused oil to spill around the beach, CBS Los Angeles reported.

Tar from the spill washed up at least as far away as a Los Angeles County beach, according to test results later released.

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