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TOPEKA (United States), Dec. 8 (AP) — An oil spill in a creek in northeast Kansas shut down a major pipeline that carries oil from Canada to the Texas Gulf Coast, leading to weeks of oil spills. Four oil prices rose briefly.
Canada-based TC Energy said it shut down its Keystone system on Wednesday night after pipeline pressure dropped. It said oil spilled into a creek in Washington County, Kansas, about 150 miles (241 kilometers) northwest of Kansas City.
The portion of the pipeline where the spill occurred has been “isolated,” the company said in a release, and the company is using fencing or barriers to stop the spilled oil from moving downstream. It did not say how much oil was spilled or what caused it.
Oil prices briefly spiked midday on Thursday as news of the spill began to spread, with the cost of a barrel of oil in near-term contracts up nearly 5% above the cost of future oil contracts. This usually indicates market anxiety about immediate supply.
“It’s something to watch, but it doesn’t necessarily have an immediate impact right now,” said Patrick De Haan, director of oil analysis at GasBuddy, which tracks gasoline prices. Going on for more than a few days can be serious.”
Analysts at RBC Capital Markets said in a note to investors that past Keystone leaks have resulted in outages that have lasted about two weeks, but this one could be longer because it involved a body of water. Depending on the location of the leak, parts of the pipeline may restart earlier, they said.
“Most of the oil that passes through Keystone is exported, so we expect little impact on domestic gasoline prices,” said AAA spokesman Andrew Gross. “Any surge in reaction is likely to fade quickly as other news emerges.”
Washington County Emergency Management Coordinator Randy Hubbard said there were no evacuations because the quake hit a rural area in the middle of the ranch. He did not know the name of the stream, nor what body of water it flowed into.
He said the pipeline operator did not disclose how much oil was discharged and it could take a day and a half to get the data.
He said he had not been to the scene but was supporting investigators from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Kansas Department of Health and Environment.
Kansas Department spokesman Matt Lara said a team was being dispatched to the scene but had no information. The EPA did not immediately respond to a request for comment, and officials with the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration did not immediately respond to questions about Thursday’s spill.
“Everyone is doing fact-finding,” Hubbard said.
In 2019, the Keystone pipeline spilled approximately 383,000 gallons (1.4 million liters) of oil in eastern North Dakota, causing damage to approximately 5 acres. (Associated Press)
(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from a Syndicated News feed, the content body may not have been modified or edited by LatestLY staff)
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