The source of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill has been discovered.
Divers at the site of the ongoing oil spill have identified that the oil is leaking
from the one-foot diameter pipeline displaced from a trench on the ocean floor
and sheared in half by Hurricane Ida.

Talos Energy is a Houston-based company that is currently
paying for the cleanup. The company said in a statement issued on Sunday
evening that the busted pipeline does not belong to them.

The company is working with the United States Coast Guard and other
state and federal agencies to coordinate the response and identify the owner of
the ruptured pipeline, the statement added.

Talos had previously leased Bay Marchand, Block 5, but
ceased production there in 2017, plugged its wells, and removed all pipeline
infrastructure by 2019.

The oil spill was first reported on Wednesday by the
Associated Press. Aerial photos had shown a miles-long brown and black oil
slick spreading about 2
miles (3.22 kilometers) south of Port Fourchon,
Louisiana.

After the reports of the spill came in, the Environmental
Protection Agency tasked a specially outfitted survey aircraft to fly over that
refinery on Thursday, as well as other industrial sites in the area hardest hit by
the hurricane’s 150-mph (240-kph) winds and storm surge.

Talos said the rate of oil spewing from the undersea pipe
had slowed dramatically in the last 48 hours and no new heavy black crude had
been seen in the last day. Two 95-foot response vessels remain on location at
the spill attempting to contain and recover oil from the water’s surface.

The Bay Marchand spill is one of dozens of reported
environmental hazards state and federal regulators are responding to in
Lousiana and the Gulf following the Category 4 hurricane that made landfall at
Port Fourchon recently. The region is a major production center of the US petrochemical industry.