The release of an estimated 600,000 gallons of tar sands oil into a creek near Washington, Kansas, on Wednesday is the largest yet for the 11-year-old Keystone Pipeline, and potentially one of the largest onshore spills of oil or petroleum products in the U.S. since 2010.
An estimated 14,000 barrels dumped into Mill Creek roughly 20 miles south of Steele City in Jefferson County, according to a report by TC Energy on Thursday, a single release that eclipses a combined 12,000 barrels spilled in separate incidents in 2017 and 2019.
And, based on the early and final reports of previous spills, the amount of oil and other chemicals released from the pipeline could increase — and even double — as the investigation into the cause moves forward.
“This is going to be months, maybe even years, before we get the full handle on this disaster and know the extent of the damage and get it all cleaned up,†Zack Pistora, a lobbyist for the Sierra Club in Kansas, told the Associated Press.
TC Energy, the Canada-based company that operates Keystone, which carries tar sands oil from Canada 2,600 miles to refineries in the Midwest and on the Gulf Coast, said earlier this week it had isolated the affected pipeline segment and contained the spill as it began cleanup.
The Environmental Protection Agency is also on site monitoring the cleanup, and said the spill into Mill Creek, which skirts the southern edge of the town of 1,000 before emptying into the Little Blue River northwest of Hanover, said there were no known effects from the spill.
The EPA said oil had not appeared to have migrated downstream into larger bodies of water. The Washington County Emergency Management office said no evacuations were ordered.
On Friday, the EPA said TC Energy had built an earthen dam 4 miles downstream from the rupture that allows water to flow but would prevent further migration of the oil. Vacuum trucks and oil skimmers continue to collect oil from Mill Creek.
John Banister, an insurance agent based in Marysville, Kansas, said he was driving to a satellite office in Belleville when he passed through what he described as a “strong odor†of oil.
“I thought something was malfunctioning in my car, or there was someone with a bad catalytic converter, or a construction crew working on the highway right there at Washington had hit a gas line,†said Banister, who was born and raised in Lincoln.
On Thursday, the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, which is responsible for regulating oil pipelines in the U.S., issued a corrective action order requiring TC Energy to investigate the root cause of the spill and take the necessary action to fix it.
Continued operation of the 96-mile segment affected by the spill without corrective measures, the pipeline agency wrote in the order, “is or would be hazardous to life, property, or the environment, and that failure to issue this order expeditiously would result in the likelihood of serious harm.â€
The order is the fifth issued on the $5.2 billion Keystone Pipeline since it began operations in 2011, according to records kept by the agency responsible for regulating it.
In May 2011, a failed fitting on piping at a pumping station near Brampton, North Dakota, resulted in the project’s first corrective action order, which remained open until January 2015, when TC Energy certified it had adequately repaired the leak.
A cracked tie-in weld between different thicknesses of pipe on a 48-mile segment of pipeline near Freeman, North Dakota, also led to a corrective order being filed.
Roughly 400 barrels of oil were reported to have leaked from the failed transition weld. The case was closed in March 2017, according to regulators.
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An estimated 407,000 gallons of oil spilled onto farmland in Marshall County, South Dakota, in November 2017, which at the time was the seventh-largest onshore oil or petroleum spill since 2010, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation.
TC Energy, which attributed the spill to faulty pipeline materials that had been damaged during construction, originally put the spill at 210,000 gallons, the Sioux Falls Argus Leader reported. The order for corrective action was closed in January 2019.
Finally, the pipeline regulatory agency last issued a corrective action order against TC Energy for the Keystone Pipeline project for an October 2019 rupture that released an estimated 383,000 gallons onto a wetland in eastern North Dakota about 300 feet downstream of a pump station.
The initial estimate of the spill, which the Government Accountability Office said was due to defects in the manufacturing of the pipe material, was 42,000 gallons.
While TC Energy estimated that leak near Edinburg, North Dakota, affected about 22,500 square feet of land, state regulators later determined the leak spread across more than 209,000 square feet of farmland — more than nine times the original estimate.
Repairs were quickly made to the pipeline and it began operations again less than two weeks later, according to the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration. The corrective action was closed in February.
Jane Kleeb, the founder of Bold Nebraska, which led the decadelong opposition to the Keystone XL Pipeline in Nebraska, said in a video posted to Facebook on Friday that stronger laws were needed to ensure pipeline operators are held responsible for leaks that affect people and the environment.
She pointed to a bill (LB1186) by Lincoln Sen. Eliot Bostar requiring pipeline companies to develop decommissioning and reclamation plans and established a fund to remove the infrastructure once its operating life had come to an end as one example.
That bill died in the Legislature’s Natural Resources Committee earlier this year.
“We are living with the pipeline, and now the folks in Kansas are living with a spill,†Kleeb said. “We need stronger laws in place, we do not have enough laws on the books to keep companies accountable for when these things happen.â€
The Keystone Pipeline, which is capable of transporting more than 622,000 barrels every day from Hardisty, Alberta, in Canada, to a junction near Steele City in Jefferson County, to refineries in Illinois and Texas, remains shut down.