The Keystone oil pipeline owned by Canadian energy company South Bow has been shuttered temporarily after fuel spilled at the line’s mile marker 171 near Fort Ransom, North Dakota.
On Tuesday morning, South Bow’s leak detection system picked up on the spill and the system was shut down two minutes after detection. The affected segment of the pipeline was isolated and the spill of about 3,500 barrels worth of oil was contained, the company said in a release Wednesday.
The leak was contained to an agricultural field. A nearby stream has also been isolated as a precaution, but it was not immediately affected, according to a Tuesday statement by the North Dakota Department of Environmental Quality (NDDEQ).
The cause of the leak is still being investigated. A worker on site said they heard a banging noise prior to the rupture, NDDEQ spill investigation program manager Bill Suess told the Associated Press.
Vacuum trucks have been dispatched to suck up the oil while other workers sent to the site are focusing on planning repairs and monitoring air quality to see whether it has been affected by oil evaporation, South Bow said on its website.
While in operation, the nearly 2,700-mile long underground Keystone pipeline sends about 624,000 barrels worth of oil down from Canada to the U.S. daily.
As of Wednesday afternoon, South Bow had not provided a timeline for when the Keystone pipeline might resume operations.
There have been over 20 spills in the pipeline’s lifetime from 2010 to today, according to Reuters news agency, including a 2022 incident in which over 14,000 barrels of oil was spilled into a creek in Kansas, the biggest such spill in years.
