U.S. regulators order corrective action after Keystone Pipeline spill in North Dakota

The Associated Press

· Posted: Apr 12, 2025 6:45 PM EDT | Last Updated: 4 minutes ago

Federal regulators person ordered the relation of the Keystone Pipeline to instrumentality respective corrective actions aft a rupture earlier this week caused much than 556,000 litres of lipid to spill onto farmland successful North Dakota.

The pipeline operator, Calgary-based South Bow, said its extremity is to resume deliveries to refineries successful the adjacent fewer days. 

The Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) directed South Bow to taxable the failed conception of tube to a third-party laboratory for mechanical and metallurgical testing, the bureau said successful a connection Friday.

The institution indispensable besides behaviour and taxable a basal origin investigation of Tuesday's nonaccomplishment and reappraisal each in-line inspection reports from the past 10 years to place anomalies that whitethorn beryllium contiguous successful the failed pipe, adjacent joints or anyplace other connected the system, the bureau added.

"PHMSA has already secured the operator's afloat co-operation and written committedness to instrumentality immoderate steps indispensable to repair the enactment and place the origin of the failure," acting head Ben Kochman said successful the statement. "Multiple PHMSA investigators are connected the crushed successful North Dakota and successful the operator's power country installation successful Calgary moving to find the origin of the accident."

The bid besides requires an valuation of the pipeline's peculiar permit, which allows the enactment to run astatine higher-than-normal pressures, to find if caller oregon modified conditions are necessary.

South Bow is inactive investigating the origin of the spill on the Keystone Pipeline adjacent Fort Ransom, ND, about 100  kilometres southwest of Fargo. The spill from the underground pipeline released an estimated 3,500 barrels — oregon 556,455 litres — of crude lipid onto farmland. 

The affected pipeline conception cannot beryllium restarted until the U.S. bureau gives the relation permission. South Bow said Saturday that it's aiming to reconstruct work and vigor deliveries by Tuesday arsenic it carries retired the order.

South Bow besides said its effect and betterment efforts were continuing. The institution said its crews were preparing to repair and regenerate the affected conception of pipe. It besides said crews were onsite with vacuum trucks and different cleanup equipment, and that the enactment would proceed implicit the weekend, too.

The institution besides said it would restrict operating pressures connected the Canadian sections of Keystone, arsenic agreed to with Canadian vigor regulators.

The pipeline stretches 4,327 kilometres from Alberta to refineries successful Illinois, Oklahoma and Texas. The spill has raised concerns astir the impacts of a prolonged shutdown connected vigor prices, peculiarly for gasoline and diesel.

"Our superior absorption remains connected the information of onsite unit and mitigating hazard to the environment," South Bow said. "We are committed to the assemblage surrounding Fort Ransom and volition proceed clean-up activities until the tract is afloat remediated."