A leak was discovered in the Keystone I pipeline earlier this week, but not before 9,120 barrels of crude oil had spilled onto wetlands in northeast North Dakota.
That’s the equivalent of 338,000 gallons — enough to fill half of an Olympic-sized swimming pool.
About the Keystone Pipeline System
Completed in 2010, the Keystone I pipeline is operated by Calgary-based TC Energy (formerly TransCanada) and carries crude oil from Alberta, Canada, through the Dakotas, Nebraska, Kansas, and Missouri to refineries in Illinois and Oklahoma.
Other sections of the Keystone pipeline network include:
- The Keystone-Cushing Extension (Phase II): Completed in February 2011 and runs 291 miles from Steele City, Nebraska, to a tank farm in Cushing, Oklahoma
- The Gulf Coast Extension (Phase III): Completed in January 2014 and runs 487 miles from Cushing to refineries in Port Arthur, Texas.
A fourth phase, the controversial Keystone XL pipeline, will originate in Alberta and extend south to Steele City. TC Energy said it hopes to begin construction on Keystone XL in 2020.
Keystone Pipeline Spill Discovered North of Edinburg
The Keystone I spill was discovered on Tuesday, October 29th, about 3 miles north of Edinburg,
According to TC Energy, crude oil currently covers roughly 2,500 square feet of wetlands. Emergency crews were still working to contain the spill on Thursday afternoon, and had brought in vacuum trucks, backhoes, and other specialized equipment to begin recovering the oil.
Exactly how much oil escaped from the pipeline won’t be known until recovery efforts conclude. Fortunately, there are no homes located near the spill and the affected wetlands are not a source of drinking water.
“We are establishing air quality, water and wildlife monitoring and will continue monitoring throughout the response,” a company statement said. “There have been no reported injuries or impacted wildlife.”
Spill Concerning for Keystone XL Opponents
Nevertheless, news of Tuesday’s spill was met with concern from opponents of Keystone XL.
“This is exactly the kind of spill we are worried about when it comes to Keystone XL being built” Joye Braun, a frontline community organizer with the Indigenous Environmental Network, told CNN. “It has never been if a pipeline breaks but rather when.”
Unfortunately, this wasn’t the first serious incident along the Keystone network. In fact, according to Reuters, the pipeline has leaked substantially more oil, and more often, in the United States than TC Energy’s regulatory risk assessments had predicted before operations began in 2010.
In 2017, a section of the Keystone pipeline spilled about 407,000 gallons of crude oil onto agricultural land in South Dakota. A leak in North Dakota in 2011 and another in South Dakota in 2016 each spilled about 16,000 gallons.
“They’ve had a few spills … more than you would hope to have on a line that’s still fairly new,” Carl Weimer, executive director of the Pipeline Safety Trust in Bellingham, Washington, told Reuters.
Keystone Spill the Latest in String of Serious Pipeline Incidents
Tuesday’s Keystone pipeline spill is just the latest in a string of accidents and explosions that have raised disturbing questions about the integrity of the nation’s pipeline infrastructure.
On August 1st, for example, a massive explosion along Enbridge’s Texas Eastern Transmission Co. network left a woman dead in Lincoln County, Kentucky, injured six others, and destroyed five homes.
Weeks later, leaking natural gas line forced some residents of Lawrence, Massachusetts, to evacuate their homes. Lawrence was one of several Boston suburbs devastated barely a year earlier when an over-pressurized natural gas pipeline exploded, tragically killing a teenage boy and destroying hundreds of homes.
In the past year, several pipeline workers have also been seriously injured in connection with explosions in Oklahoma, Texas, and Pennsylvania.
Trump Administration Pushes to Speed Pipeline Construction
Despite the concerns raised by these incidents, the Trump Administration has been pushing to speed the construction of natural gas and oil pipelines across the country.
Earlier this month, the federal Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration published new regulations intended to make pipelines safer. Among other things, the proposed rules would require operators to follow “risk-based integrity management” practices to keep pipelines in good condition, protect pipelines from extreme weather, and grant the regulator more power to shut down or restrict pipeline operations to ensure safety.
While the proposals won praise from pipeline operators, critics point out that they fail to establish a process for determining where new pipelines should be built or set emergency procedures for the public to follow when there’s a leak or explosion.
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