Good news from the sunken SS Montebello off the Central Coast near Cambria—no oil remains inside the tanker torpedoed by the Japanese during World War II. But while that’s a relief to those who worried the ship might be a future spill waiting to happen, left unanswered is what happened to the oil, the Mercury News says:
…After more than a week of high-tech imaging and drilling into the side of the aging hulk, scientists confirmed that the sunken ship's 32 oil tanks now hold only seawater. In other words, enough oil to fill the gas tanks of roughly 70,000 cars is gone, and nobody knows what happened to it.
"It could have been a slow gradual leak over many years since 1941. It could have all come up the day the ship was sunk in 1941. Basically, who knows? We'll probably never know," said Coast Guard spokesman Adam Eggers.
Earlier: At last, a look at a sunken World War II oil tanker
