AP STORY: https://www.chicoer.com/2025/04/08/keystone-pipeline-rupture/
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| The pipeline transported an average 624,000 barrels — or more than 26 million gallons — per day in 2024, according to Canadian regulators. It stretches 2,689 miles (4327 kilometers) from Alberta, Canada, to Texas. |
The Keystone oil pipeline was shut down Tuesday morning after it ruptured in North Dakota, with the spill confined to an agricultural field. The cause of the rupture and the volume of crude oil spilled were not immediately clear. An employee working at the site near Fort Ransom heard a “mechanical bang” and shut down the pipeline within about two minutes, said Bill Suess, spill investigation program manager with the North Dakota Department of Environmental Quality.
Oil was reported
surfacing 300 yards south of the pump station in a field and emergency
personnel responded, Suess said. No people or structures were affected by
the spill, he said. A nearby stream that only flows during part of the
year was not impacted but was blocked off and isolated as a precaution,
he said. It’s unclear at what rate the 30-inch pipeline was flowing, but
even at two minutes “it’s going to have a fairly good volume,” Suess
said. “But … we’ve had much, much bigger spills,” including one
involving the same pipeline a few years ago in Walsh County, North
Dakota, he said. “I don’t think it’s going to be that huge,” Suess
said.
The $5.2 billion pipeline constructed in 2011 Keystone Pipeline carries crude oil across Saskatchewan and Manitoba through North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas and Missouri to refineries in Illinois and Oklahoma. Though the pipeline was constructed by TC Energy, it is now managed by a liquid pipelines business South Bow as of 2024. The Associated Press has reached out to South Bow for comment.
A proposed extension to the pipeline called Keystone XL would have transported crude oil to refineries on the Gulf Coast, but it was ultimately abandoned by the company in 2021 after years of protests from environmental activists and Indigenous communities over environmental concerns.
The Pipeline Safety Trust said this latest leak adds to the troubled history of the Keystone pipeline, which has had 13 significant incidents in the 15 years it has been operating.
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