Keystone Pipeline Spilled Oil Again In North Dakota

Over 380,000 gallons of oil spill from Keystone pipeline in North Dakota Part of the Keystone 1 Pipeline was shut down after a leak of about 9,120 barrels of oil 383,040 gallons was discovered, TC Energy company said in a statement.

The spill as much as 383,000 gallons was reported just hours after a key environmental assessment hearing on plans for another controversial pipeline, Keystone XL.

The system runs more than 2,600 miles from Canada and into Nebraska where it splits. And on Tuesday night, it began to spill an unknown quantity of crude oil near a wetland in the vicinity of Edinburg, North Dakota. The spill comes almost exactly two years afterleak from the same system.

The leak was detected Tuesday night near near Edinburg, a tiny community northwest of Grand Forks, according to a press release from the North Dakota Department of Environmental Quality.

“We are establishing air quality, water and wildlife monitoring and will continue monitoring throughout the response. There have been no reported injuries or impacted wildlife,” TC Energy said.

The Keystone Pipeline, stretching 2,147 miles from the tar sands region of Alberta to the Midwest, has a history of oil spills. Nearly a dozen, mostly small spills occurred in its first year of operation after coming online in 2010, according to news reports at the time. It has had several more since then, some of them large. In April 2016, it spilled 16,800 gallons of crude oil onto a rural agricultural area near Freeman, South Dakota. In November 2017, the pipeline spilled 276,864 gallons of crude oil near Amherst, South Dakota, according to the U.S. State Department.

The North Dakota Department of Environmental Qualityreportedthat the spill stretches 1,500 feet long and 15 feet wide. The department has not yet responded to Earther’s request for comment on a clean-up for timeline, as well as any potential impacts to wildlife or natural resources. However, oil in a wetland? That’snever good news.

The company, formerly known as TransCanada, said that air quality, water and wildlife monitoring is underway in the region, and there have been no reported injuries or impacted wildlife.

Yet despite the recent spills, TC Energy is trying to expand this pipeline system with a new pipeline: the notorious Keystone XL. The proposed 1,184-mile-long pipeline would transport up to 830,000 barrels of crude oil between Canada and the U.S. The only reason TC Energy has a shot at building it is because of President Donald Trump, whoforced throughapproval of the project afterformer President Barack Obama killed it.