The practically 2,700-mile Keystone oil pipeline was shut down Tuesday morning after it ruptured in North Dakota, halting the stream of hundreds of gallons of crude oil from Canada to refineries within the U.S.
South Bow, a liquid pipeline enterprise that manages the pipeline, mentioned it shut down the pipeline after management middle leak detection methods detected a strain drop within the system. The spill is confined to an agricultural discipline in a rural space, about 60 miles southwest of Fargo.
“The affected segment has been isolated, and operations and containment resources have been mobilized to site,” the corporate mentioned. “Our primary focus right now is the safety of onsite personnel and mitigating risk to the environment.”
The pipeline transported a median 624,000 barrels per day in 2024, in line with Canadian regulators. It stretches 2689 miles (4327 kilometers) from Albert, Canada, to Texas.
It wasn’t clear what induced the rupture of the underground pipeline or the quantity of crude oil launched into the sector. An worker working on the website close to Fort Ransom heard a “mechanical bang” and shut down the pipeline inside about two minutes, mentioned Invoice Suess, spill investigation program supervisor with the North Dakota Division of Environmental High quality.
Oil surfaced about 300 yards (274 meters) south of the pump station in a discipline and emergency personnel responded, Suess mentioned.
No folks or buildings had been affected by the spill, he mentioned. A close-by stream that solely flows throughout a part of the yr was not affected however was blocked off and remoted as a precaution, he mentioned. The Pipelines and Hazardous Supplies Security Administration is sending a group to research the reason for the leak.
Fort Ransom is in a hilly, forested space of southeastern North Dakota recognized for scenic views.
It is unclear at what charge the 30-inch (0.8-meter) pipeline was flowing, however even at two minutes “it’s going to have a fairly good volume,” Suess mentioned. “But … we’ve had much, much bigger spills,” together with one involving the identical pipeline a number of years in the past in Walsh County, North Dakota, he mentioned.
“I don’t think it’s going to be that huge,” Suess mentioned.
The Keystone Pipeline was constructed in 2010 at a price of $5.2 billion and carries crude oil throughout Saskatchewan and Manitoba by means of North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas and Missouri to refineries in Illinois, Oklahoma and Texas. Although the pipeline was constructed by TC Power, it’s now managed by South Bow as of 2024.
A proposed extension to the pipeline referred to as Keystone XL would have transported crude oil to refineries on the Gulf Coast, however it was in the end deserted by the corporate in 2021 after years of protests from environmental activists and Indigenous communities over environmental considerations.
In December 2022, practically 13,000 barrels of oil spilled from Keystone’s line in Kansas right into a creek traversing a pasture. An engineering consulting agency mentioned the bend within the pipeline on the website had been “overstressed” since being put in in 2010, doubtless due to development exercise altering the land across the pipe. TC Power mentioned a defective weld within the line’s bend induced a crack that exacerbated over time.
This story was initially featured on Fortune.com
