An oil spill in North Dakota on Tuesday morning shut down some 2,700-miles of the Keystone oil pipeline and halted the flow of millions of gallons of crude oil from Canada to refineries in the U.S. The ruptured pipeline was discovered by South Bow, which manages the pipeline, after the control center leak detection systems detected a drop in pressure within the system.
According to South Bow, an estimated 3,500 barrels of oil (147,000 gallons) spilled into an agricultural field in a rural area, about 60 miles southwest of Fargo, AP reported.
“The news of this spill is devastating, but also completely unsurprising for the communities sounding the alarm for decades about the dangers of the Keystone pipeline,” Jasmine Vazin, Deputy Director with the Beyond Dirty Fuels campaign, said.
The cause of the spill is under investigation, while the time to repair is unknown, spokesperson Kristin Anderson said. South Bow said the pipeline “was operating within its design and regulatory approval requirements at the time of the incident.”
Paul Blackburn, a policy analyst with Bold Alliance, an environmental and landowners group that fought the pipeline’s extension, said the spill was not a minor one and estimated the volume of the spill to be equal to 16 tanker trucks of oil. He also said this estimate could increase over time.
Keystone XL was built in 2010, by TC Energy and was under South Bow’s operation beginning last year. The North Dakota Sierra Club fought the pipeline at its inception and said the spill “follows layoffs and budget cuts through federal agencies that monitor pipeline safety.”
“The Trump administration is making cuts to pipeline safety workers as rural communities across the country are left to clean up the mess,” Vazin said. “We’re seeing in real time complete control given to the oil and gas industry to pollute with impunity while driving up prices for working families. If we want to protect our communities from pricing volatility, pollution and environmental disasters we must reduce our dependence on fossil fuels.”
While some fear gasoline prices will increase while the pipeline in being repaired, other experts said “the refineries likely have a supply of crude oil already on hand that would help protect against immediate impacts of the shutdown,” Minnesota Public Radio reported.
“Even if the pipeline gets cut off completely for say 2 or 3 weeks, they have enough crude [oil] to continue refining for gasoline,” Mark LaCour, editor-in-chief of the Oil and Gas Global Network, said.
COMMENTS