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Friday, November 17, 2017
North American energy company TransCanada Corporation reported on Thursday that about 210,000 gallons of crude oil (795,000 litres or 5000 oil barrels) escaped from its Keystone Pipeline, spilling in Marshall County, South Dakota, in the northern United States. The oil was on its way from Canada to Texas for processing. The spill comes four days before the neighboring Nebraska state legislature is scheduled to vote on a proposed extension of the pipeline, Keystone XL. Environmental groups such as Greenpeace have asked the legislature to reconsider allowing the extension.
TransCanada said that the leak was discovered at about 5:45 a.m. local time (1145 UTC). The company shut down the northern part of the almost 2,600 mile (4,200 km) pipeline, from Alberta to Oklahoma, and will not reopen it until the leak has been fixed. The southern portion of the pipeline, from Oklahoma to the Gulf Coast, remains open.
Brian Walsh of the South Dakota Department of Environment and Natural Resources said, “It is a below-ground pipeline but some oil has surfaced above ground to the grass. It will be a few days until they can excavate and get in borings to see if there is groundwater contamination.”
Marshall County is also home to the Lake Traverse Native American Reservation, which belongs to the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate. “We are concerned that the oil spill is close to our treaty land, but we are trying to stay positive that they are getting the spill contained and that they will share any environmental assessments with the tribal agency,” tribal chairman Dave Flute told the press.
This is not the first leak from the Keystone Pipeline. A 400-barrel spill in April 2016 took more than two months to clean up. Rachel Rye Butler of Greenpeace said that approving the Keystone XL extension was amounted to “a thumbs-up to likely spills in the future.”
The US$6.3 billion (C$8 billion) Keystone XL project, which would enlarge the pipeline and provide a shorter route than the current Keystone pipeline was the subject of large protests in 2016 and 2017, largely by Native Americans who maintained that the route violated their sovereignty and by environmentalists concerned about groundwater contamination. The Keystone XL project was blocked by then-U.S. President Obama and revived by President Trump. Monday’s vote in Nebraska is the last approval TransCanada needs to finish Keystone XL. Supporters of the Keystone XL pipeline have argued that the pipeline is still safer than transporting oil by road.