April 8 (UPI) — The Keystone Pipeline in North Dakota was shut down Tuesday morning after reports of a “bang” and spilled oil, according to officials.
In the hours before 7:45 a.m. local time, an employee at a pump station “heard what was described as a mechanical bang,” Bill Suess, spill investigation program manager with North Dakota’s Department of Environmental Quality, told CBS.
The cause of the ruptured pipe and the volume of spilled oil was not immediately clear.
He added that the unidentified employee then shut down the pipeline and notified emergency personnel and it was then isolated with containment resource deployed to the area.
A shutdown was initiated after a control center leak detection system displayed a pressure drop in its system, according to liquid pipeline company South Bow, which has managed the pipeline since last year.
South Bow officials said the burst occurred near Fort Ransom at Milepost 171 in the southeast corner of the state.
Crude oil was spewed over an agricultural field some 300 yards south of the pump station. According to reports, no structures or human life was impacted by the spill.
“Our primary focus right now is the safety of onsite personnel and mitigating risk to the environment,” the company said, adding it was making “appropriate notifications to our regulators, landowners and customers.”
The nearly 3,000-mile-long Keystone Pipeline went online in 2011 and transports crude oil to the United States via Canada running through North and South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri, Illinois and Oklahoma.
Since 2017 it has experienced at least three sizable oil spills, the largest of which in 2022 spilled roughly 14,000 barrels into a Kansas creek. Later, federal lawmakers sought answers.
In February 2023, Calgary-based TC Energy, formerly known as TransCanada, announced in its initial findings a massive Keystone Pipeline oil spill in northern Kansas was caused by a combination of factors, including bending and a weld flaw.
A separate 2019 incident in North Dakota spilled more than 383,000 gallons which covered an estimated half-acre of wetland.
The proposed pipeline extension to carry oil further to the Gulf Coast was shut down under the Biden administration in 2021. Now, President Donald Trump seeks to expand oil drilling even in protected areas.
“Easy approvals, almost immediate start!” Trump wrote weeks ago on social media.
