At a Glance

The U.S. Coast Guard is ordering Taylor Energy to clean an oil spill in the Gulf.Taylor Energy will be fined $40,000 per day if it fails to comply.The Gulf oil spill has been leaking for 14 years.

An energy company has been ordered by the U.S. Coast Guard to contain or remove the spilled oil from a former production site in the Gulf of Mexico or face a fine of $40,000 per day for failure to comply.

The Coast Guard told Taylor Energy to "," the Washington Post reported.

Taylor Energy Company was given the ultimatum about their site in the Gulfwhich has been gushing thousands of gallons of oil each day for the last 14 years.The former site sits just 12 miles off the shore of Louisiana and was destroyed in 2004 by an underwater mudslide caused by Hurricane Ivan.

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Since then, an estimated (2,016 to 71,400 gallons) have been leaking from the destroyed platform into the Gulf, according to a study in the Marine Pollution Bulletin.

A satellite photo taken June 21, 2014 shows an 8.3-mile-long oil slick stemming from the Taylor Energy Company's oil platform.

(NASA/SkyTruth via AP)

These estimates are exponentially higher than the estimates found by contractors hired by Taylor Energy— one to 55 barrels a day — when they were given company-provided data.

The Coast Guard requested Taylor Energy attend and present a minimum of two containment plans at an early November meeting. Taylor Energy's proposal was scrapped in favor of one submitted by an independent contractor that "provided both the best capability and timeline for responding" to the spill, said Coast Guard spokesman John Fitzgerald.

If the spill continues unchecked, the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement estimates that .

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An estimated 1.5 to 3.5 million barrels of oil have spewed from Taylor Energy's former site since 2004, disaster spilled during the largest offshore spill in U.S. history.

To this point, Taylor Energy has plugged only nine of the wells at the gulf platform, leaving 19 untouched.

Theleak went undetected for six years until environmentalist groups monitoring the Deepwater Horizon disaster drew the attention of the Gulf Restoration Network and SkyTruth to oil slicks that weren't connected with the BP spill.