A Keystone Pipeline System oil spill this week at least briefly caused a spike in oil prices and its environmental impact is yet unknown.
“U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Region 7 has dispatched two on-scene coordinators (OSCs) to the scene of the reported discharge,” the agency said Thursday. “State and local responders are also on-scene.”
TC Energy announced a shutdown of the Keystone Pipeline System – a 2,687-mile delivery system for crude oil that stretches through Canada and the U.S. – during the early morning hours Thursday due to an oil leak into a Washington County, Kan., creek approximately 20 miles south of Steele City, Neb.
According to the company, an emergency shutdown response was initiated Wednesday evening after a pressure drop was detected in the system. As of Thursday morning, the affected segment had been isolated and measures were “deployed to control downstream migration of the release.”
Crews were on the scene to contain and recover the lost oil.
“Our primary focus right now is the health and safety of onsite staff and personnel, the surrounding community, and mitigating risk to the environment through the deployment of booms [temporary floating barriers] downstream as we work to contain and prevent further migration of the release,” said TC Energy.
As of late Thursday afternoon, the system was still shut down and the company estimated that 14,000 barrels of oil had been released during the spill.
“We immediately activated our emergency response procedures and we have established environmental monitoring, including around-the-clock air monitoring,” it said. “Our response efforts will continue until we have fully remediated the site.”
According to the Associated Press, the spill was 5 miles from Washington Kan., a town with approximately 1,100 residents.
Local farmer Paul Stewart said part of it was contained on his land using yellow booms and a dam of dirt, said the outlet, which added that the spill occurred in Mill Creek, which flows into the Little Blue River.
“At this time, there are no known impacts to drinking water wells or the public,” the EPA said Thursday. “Surface water of Mill Creek has been impacted. EPA OSCs will oversee TC Energy’s response operations to ensure proper cleanup and evaluate the cause of the incident.”
If drinking water wells or the public could become impacted by the spill, the agency said it will release information via social media channels as well as an updated statement.
“This is not the first spill from the Keystone 1 pipeline, which has a history of spills,” said the Sierra Club environmental organization in a statement Thursday. “In fact, this is the pipeline’s 22nd spill, a dozen of which happened in its first year of operation alone and in 2017 one of these spills dumped more than 400,000 gallons of oil into farmland in South Dakota.”
Sierra Club Beyond Dirty Fuels Director Catherine Collentine said that there “is no such thing as a safe tar sands pipeline and this is another disaster that continues to prove we must put our climate and our communities first.”
As for gas prices, which shot up this year along with inflation of the prices of other goods and services, CNN Business reported that “the shutdown of the major oil pipeline that carries crude from Canada triggered volatility in the energy market on Thursday, with oil prices briefly surging as much as 5% before retreating.”
Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis at GasBuddy, which tracks gasoline prices said the pipeline leak is “something to keep an eye on,” regarding oil prices.
“It could eventually impact oil supplies to refiners, which could be severe if it lasts more than a few days,” he said, according to the AP.
Gas prices in the U.S. have recently started to come down to around $3 per gallon after being close to $4 a month ago. However, AAA said that the Keystone incident is not the only factor that threatens to stop the trend.
“The recent steep plunge in domestic gas prices may be affected by the results of Sunday’s meeting of OPEC+, a group of 23 oil-producing nations, including Saudi Arabia and Russia,” the group said this week. “Domestic gasoline prices have dropped 26 cents nationally in the past two weeks. But OPEC+ decided to maintain output cuts of 2 million barrels per day, about 2% of world demand. The purpose of the move is to boost the global price of oil, which has fallen recently on fears of demand weakness, specifically in China.”
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