Keystone pipeline spill hits TransCanada

GARY PARK

For Petroleum News

TransCanada has shut down its existing Keystone pipeline because of an oil spill in South Dakota, giving the anti-pipeline faction a fresh load of ammunition to aim at the safety record of transporting crude in North America.

The company said the system was shut down April 2 within minutes of a local landowner reporting signs of a leak, raising questions about the reliability of Keystone’s own fail-safe systems.

For now, the cause of the spill and the volume discharged will not be known until TransCanada has completed its own investigation.

However, a TransCanada spokesman said the spill covered a “small surface area” with no evident impact on the environment.

The probe into the incident will also involve the U.S. National Response Center and the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration.

Anthony Swift, a spokesman at the U.S. Natural Resources Defense Council, said the spill reinforces the need for the Obama administration to require exhaustive environmental reviews of Enbridge’s planned Alberta Clipper line and other proposals to expand the Midwest pipeline network.

He said that what happened with Keystone is the “latest stark reminder that all too often with pipelines it’s not whether they will leak but when.”

Greenpeace campaigner Keith Stewart said it was troublesome that a landowner and not TransCanada’s spill detection system raised the flag.

Keystone was commissioned in 2010 and has been operating three phases - two with capacity of 590,000 barrels per day to refineries in Illinois and the trading hub at Cushing, Oklahoma, and one to deliver 700,000 bpd to the refining region at Port Arthur Texas.

The first two phases were affected by the shutdown during the investigation and cleanup, but the connection to Texas remains active.

Keystone XL, which has been shelved for at least the remainder of President Barack Obama’s term of office, was designed to carry another 800,000 bpd (including 100,000 bpd from the North Dakota Bakken) to Gulf Coast refineries.

Stewart said TransCanada has also been making big claims about the safety standards incorporated into its 1.1 million bpd Energy East project from Alberta to refineries in Ontario, Quebec and New Brunswick, and an export terminal on the Atlantic coast.

He said the company’s assertion that it can identify a leak within minutes is inconsistent with “the truth that most pipeline spills aren’t detected until the oil makes its way to the surface where it can be seen and smelled.”