A federal grand jury has accused oil company Amplify Energy Corp. and two of its subsidiaries with negligently discharging oil during a pipeline break in California in early October. An indictment filed on Wednesday charges Houston-based Amplify and its subsidiaries, Beta Operating Co. and San Pedro Bay Pipeline Co., with one misdemeanor count of negligent discharge of oil. The companies own and operate the 17-mile-long San Pedro Bay Pipeline. If found guilty, the companies face a maximum of five years of probation as well as potentially millions of dollars in fines. Amplify has disputed the allegations, saying it had investigated the pipeline once alerted to a leak, but that crew were unaware that the leak detection system was malfunctioning. The detection system was “wrongly signaling a potential leak at the platform where no leak could be detected by the platform personnel and where no leak was actually occurring,” it said in a statement. In a press release, Department …