TC Energy Says Keystone Pipeline Spill in North Dakota Contained

TC Energy Corp said on Wednesday that a response team contained an oil spill in Walsh County, North Dakota from its Keystone crude pipeline. Oil has not migrated beyond an immediately affected area of about 2,500 square yards (2,090 square meters), the company said is a statement.

The company detected a drop in pressure on Tuesday night on its 590,000-barrel-per-day (bpd) Keystone oil pipeline system from Canada and it was shut, TC Energy said in a statement, without specifying the exact impact on operations. It did not say if the entire route of the line was closed, or just a section of the pipe.

“There have been no reported injuries or impact on wildlife and we do not have the exact volume released at this point,” the company said.

The spill took place about three miles (5 km) northwest of Edinburg, in Walsh County, North Dakota, where part of the pipeline is underground. Pipeline repair and cleanup might take two or three months, said Brent Nelson, an emergency response manager for Walsh County. The North Dakota Department of Environmental Quality was overseeing the cleanup and investigation of the spill, said Karl Rockeman, director of the department’s division of water quality.

The pipeline system is a key transporter of Canadian crude from northern Alberta to refineries in the U.S. Midwest.

Canada heavy crude differentials widened slightly on the news, according to Net Energy Exchange. Volumes, however, were thin as the market is outside the monthly Canadian crude trading window. Shares of TC Energy fell to their lowest in more than two months.

Western Canada Select (WCS) heavy blend crude for November delivery last traded at $17.15 per barrel below U.S. oil futures, widening from $17.05 per barrel below WTI on Tuesday. December WCS last traded at $16.95 a barrel under, widening from Tuesday’s settle of $16.75 a barrel below WTI.

In the U.S. market, the November/December WTI cash roll, which allows traders to roll contracts to the next month, firmed on the outage, traders said.

(Reporting by K. Sathya Narayanan, Brijesh Patel and Rod Nickel; Additional Reporting by Nia Williams, Devika Krishna Kumar and Diptendu Lahiri; Writing by Laila Kearney; Editing by Rosalba O'Brien and Richard Pullin)