Keystone oil pipeline shut down after rupture in rural North Dakota, owner South Bow confirms
Miles of unused pipe for the Keystone XL pipeline sit in a lot on Oct. 14, 2014 outside Gascoyne, North Dakota.Andrew Burton/Getty Images
The Keystone oil pipeline was shut down early Tuesday morning after it ruptured in North Dakota, with the spill confined to an agricultural field.
Calgary-based South Bow Corp., which owns the pipeline that originates in Hardisty, Alta., confirmed in an e-mail to the Associated Press that it shut down the line at 7:42 a.m. CT on Tuesday after control centre leak detection tools detected a pressure drop in the system.
The company said the affected segment had been isolated, and it had mobilized people and equipment in response to the spill at milepost 171 of Keystone. The nearest centre is Fort Ransom, N.D.
“Our primary focus right now is the safety of onsite personnel and mitigating risk to the environment,” the company said.
South Bow said in the e-mail it was notifying regulators, landowners and customers of the spill.
The cause of the rupture and the volume of crude oil spilled were not immediately clear, but the company said it would release more information as the situation becomes clearer.
An employee working at the site near Fort Ransom heard a “mechanical bang” and shut down the pipeline within about two minutes, said Bill Suess, spill investigation program manager with the North Dakota Department of Environmental Quality.
Oil was reported surfacing 300 yards (274 metres) south of the pump station in a field and emergency personnel responded, Mr. Suess said.
No people or structures were affected by the spill, he said. A nearby stream that only flows during part of the year was not affected but was blocked off and isolated as a precaution, he said.
It’s unclear at what rate the 30-inch (0.8-metre) pipeline was flowing, but even in two minutes “it’s going to have a fairly good volume,” Mr. Suess said. “But … we’ve had much, much bigger spills,” including one involving the same pipeline a few years ago in Walsh County, N.S., he said.
“I don’t think it’s going to be that huge,” Mr. Suess said.
The $5.2-billion pipeline constructed in 2011 Keystone Pipeline carries crude oil from Alberta into Saskatchewan and Manitoba and continues through North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas and Missouri to refineries in Illinois and Oklahoma. The pipeline was constructed by TC Energy and has been owned by liquid pipelines business South Bow as of 2024.
A proposed extension to the pipeline called Keystone XL would have transported crude oil to refineries on the Gulf Coast, but it was ultimately abandoned by the company in 2021 after years of protests from environmental activists and Indigenous communities over environmental concerns.
Oil prices on Tuesday continued the downward trajectory they have been on ever since U.S. President Donald Trump announced a swath of import tariffs.
The price of West Texas Intermediate was down 4.2 per cent at US$58.14 in late afternoon trading, while South Bow shares were trading down roughly 6.5 per cent at $31.10 on the Toronto Stock Exchange.
With reports from The Associated Press