Poll of the Day > Keystone pipeline leaks 350,000+ gallons of oil in North Dakota

(+) Yeah! (+)

If only someone had predicted this could have happened and tried to stop the pipeline from being built...

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-pipeline-spill-ndakota/keystone-pipeline-shut-after-spilling-9000-barrels-of-oil-in-north-dakota-idUSKBN1XA1ZC

An estimated 9,120 barrels of oil have spilled from TC Energy Corps Keystone crude pipeline in North Dakota, state authorities said on Thursday, a major leak at a time of increased regulatory scrutiny of oil pipeline expansions.

The initial estimate makes it one of the biggest onshore crude spills in the past decade and the largest for Keystone, according to U.S. Pipeline Hazardous Materials and Safety Administration (PHMSA) data back to 2010.

The cause of the rupture has not been disclosed.

Pipeline operator TC Energy is seeking to expand its pipelines linking Western Canadian oil fields to U.S. refineries with its proposed Keystone XL project. The $6 billion project has faced regulatory and environmental hurdles despite backing by U.S. President Donald Trump.

A nearly 10-year legal fight between TC Energy, formerly called TransCanada, and environmental activists has delayed development of the line that would run from Alberta, Canada to the U.S. Gulf Coast. A Nebraska court in August affirmed an alternative route through the state, raising hopes the project might proceed and provide badly needed transport for Albertas crude.

Western Canada Select heavy oil traded on Thursday at $20 per barrel less than U.S. benchmark WTI, the biggest discount in 11 months, according to Net Energy Exchange.

On Wednesday, TC Energy said its 590,000-barrel-per-day (bpd) Keystone pipeline system to the United States was shut after a drop in pressure was detected. It said there were no injuries and it was investigating the cause of the breach near Edinburg, North Dakota.

The company has not said when pipeline operations would restart, but told shippers that service to U.S. Midwest refiners would remain shut during the outage. The line could remain shut for at least a week, according to market sources on Thursday.

TC Energy has begun using backhoes and vacuum trucks to recover the spilled oil, said Brent Nelson, an emergency response manager for Walsh County who visited the site.

At this time I would estimate 50 75 persons on site working between two shifts ... they are focusing on oil recovery at this time and will then move to making repairs, he said.

The exact amount of oil released will not be available until recovery has been completed, TC Energy said in a statement on Thursday.

In 2017, a Keystone crude pipeline leak in rural South Dakota spilled nearly 6,600 barrels, the PHMSA data showed. Earlier this year, Keystone was partially shut after leaking 43 barrels of crude in Missouri.

The latest release also affected a wetland area, a statement from the North Dakota Department of Environmental Quality said.

Theyve had a few spills ... more than you would hope to have on a line thats still fairly new, said Carl Weimer, executive director of the Pipeline Safety Trust in Bellingham, Washington, a nonprofit promoting pipeline safety.

Keystone has leaked substantially more oil, and more often, in the United States than the company indicated to regulators in risk assessments before operations began in 2010, according to a Reuters review in 2017.

The Keystone outage also disrupted flows on the Marketlink pipeline out of the Cushing, Oklahoma, storage hub, roiling oil prices at the delivery point for U.S. crude futures.

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Huh who would have guessed this pipeline was a terrible idea
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Mead posted...

Huh who would have guessed this pipeline was a terrible idea

I'm shocked! Shocked, I tell you!

Theyve had a few spills ... more than you would hope to have on a line thats still fairly new, said Carl Weimer, executive director of the Pipeline Safety Trust in Bellingham, Washington, a nonprofit promoting pipeline safety.

Keystone has leaked substantially more oil, and more often, in the United States than the company indicated to regulators in risk assessments before operations began in 2010, according to a Reuters review in 2017.

Huh, imagine that.... A pipeline that leveraged sheer political partisan football to ram through its approval without adequately studying its environmental concerns first ended up being less reliable than claimed. But why? Why would the industry that stood to massively financially benefit from it opening as soon as possible and who knows that executives are never held accountable for their criminal decisions by the government....lie to us? It...it just doesn't make any sense!

Good thing we have such a stable genius in office. He'll certainly make moves to shore up environmental protections and beef up regulati- oh, wait :/
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Mad_Max posted...

Good thing we have such a stable genius in office. He'll certainly make moves to shore up environmental protections and beef up regulati- oh, wait :/

I wonder what it's like, running a huge company and knowing I can push out complete lies and fabrications about the safety and quality of my product in order to win a contract award, and then regardless of the damage my actions cause the rest of the world, I will never ever EVER face the possibility of a jail term and the only financial punishment I may receive is a golden parachute on my way out...

I been voting against the pipeline for like 5 years now, y'all shoulda listened!
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That's rookie numbers!
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Lokarin posted...

I been voting against the pipeline for like 5 years now, y'all shoulda listened!

Like there was any chance they were gonna actually respect that vote
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Some conservatives are going to come here and say how pipelines are the safest way to move oil.

Which is ridiculous, because even if a tanker truck tips over, that's about 8k gallons at once, instead of 350k gallons.
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Mad_Max posted...

If only someone had predicted this could have happened and tried to stop the pipeline from being built...

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/train-that-derailed-in-west-virginia-had-new-tanker-cars-for-crude-oil/

350k gallons is nothing compared to the millions that have been leaked by train derailments, etc. While all methods carry risk, pipelines are STILL by far the safest delivery method (well, second-safest after boat)

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2018/10/11/which-is-safer-for-transporting-crude-oil-rail-truck-pipeline-or-boat/#2a5585d27b23

Not that any of this matters to the eco crowd whose propaganda you're swallowing whole and then asking for seconds & thirds, because up until you can't start your car or heat your home, you're not going to appreciate why we need oil.
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