Kansas holds its breath after oil pipeline leak

WASHINGTON COUNTY, Kansas — Residents near the site of the worst oil pipeline leak in the United States in a decade took the commotion and smell in stride, as cleanup crews labored in near-freezing temperatures and investigators searched for clues to what caused the spill.

A heavy odor of oil hung in the air as tractor trailers ferried generators, lighting and ground mats to a muddy site on the outskirts of this farming community, where a breach in the Keystone pipeline discovered on Wednesday spewed 14,000 barrels of oil.

Pipeline operator TC Energy did not provide details of the breach or say when a restart on the broken segment could begin. Officials are scheduled on Monday to receive a briefing on the pipeline breach and cleanup, said Randy Hubbard, Washington County's emergency preparedness coordinator, on Saturday.

TC Energy said on Friday it was evaluating plans to restart the line, which carries 622,000 barrels of Canadian oil per day to US refineries and export hubs.

"We could smell it first thing in the morning; it was bad," said Washington resident Dana Cecrle, shrugging off the disruption. "Stuff breaks. Pipelines break, oil trains derail."

The Keystone pipeline spill in a creek running through rural pastureland in Washington County, Kansas, about 240 kilometers northwest of Kansas City, was also the biggest in the system's history, according to US Department of Transportation data.

Cause under investigation

Environmental specialists from as far away as Mississippi were helping with the cleanup and federal investigators combed the site to determine what caused the 91-centimeter pipeline to break.

"Hell, that's life," said 70-year-old Carol Hollingsworth of nearby Hollenberg, Kansas, about the latest spill. "We got to have the oil."

TC Energy had around 100 workers leading the cleanup and containment efforts, and the Environmental Protection Agency was providing oversight and monitoring, EPA spokesperson Kellen Ashford said.

Past Keystone spills have led to outages that lasted about two weeks. It was the third major spill of several thousand barrels of crude on the pipeline since it opened in 2010.

The Keystone pipeline's previous largest spill came in 2017, when more than 6,500 barrels spilled near Amherst, South Dakota, according to a US Government Accountability Office report released last year.

Agencies Via Xinhua