An oil spill unleashed by Hurricane Ida is highlighting longstanding concerns about the more than 18,000 miles of decommissioned pipelines that still snake through the Gulf of Mexico, even though they no longer transport crude and natural gas. The spill, roughly three miles from the Louisiana coast, is believed to have sprung from an abandoned 12-inch pipeline that still had oil inside. It appeared on Tuesday to have been contained, but not before it created an oily slick 14 miles long. There are more than 18,000 miles (29,000 kilometers) of abandoned pipelines that litter the Gulf of Mexico, some installed in the middle of the last century. The steel meanders as deep as 9,500 feet (2,900 meters) below the surface alongside some 8,600 miles of active pipelines. “There is so damn much of that hardware in the Gulf,” said John Amos, president of SkyTruth, a West Virginia-based group that […]