From looking at the news videos of the tarballs,
some crude oil is just like what has made it to the beach.
In Alberta CA the famous tar sands are about like this, including even the sand, otherwise this is mainly the remaining wax and tar content which picks up the sand when it washes up.
After "weathering" before drifting ashore, most of the light volatile hydrocarbon content has evaporated leaving only the heavy residue consisting of wax & bitumen which balls up as the sheen shrinks naturally.
If it was a light crude to begin with that could quite often look more like root beer (complete with foam) when fresh or even be as semi-transparent as iced tea. And can be quite low in viscosity compared to diesel fuel.
In the case of really light crude there might only be about 1 percent residuum content, IOW for every 100 barrels spilled only 1 barrel of this tar would remain to wash ashore after evaporation of the light ends.
Other times with a heavy crude each barrel might be more than 50 percent residuum, which means orders of magnitude difference in shoreline devastation per barrel lost from the pipeline.
Looks like the operator is Amplify Energy whose spokesman didn't seem that well-spoken, and I think it can be recognized as a deer-in-the-headlights moment. Seems like they are one of the ones finding their niche by taking over proven properties from much larger oil companies who had drilled the wells and fully depreciated the assets years ago. Everything has already paid for itself so attractive deals can always be made for next-generation investors. The majors could have easily gone "green" decades ago with their financial resources (could have divested from oil completely) and provided good shareholder returns from pure financial operations, but naturally there is even more money in continuing to bring in gushers.
Shell did a bit of that last month when they sold lots of their Texas wells to Conoco, I would expect the ones needing extensive infrastructure repair will be passed on to smaller companies like Amplify before the bill for that kind of thing comes due, while the figures still look as good on paper as they ever did.