The oil spill in northern Dakota causes Keystone Pipeline to stop

The Keystone pipeline system, which carries raw oil from Canada to the United States, was closed on Tuesday morning due to an oil spill in southeast Northern Dakota, government and company officials said.

The pipeline broke north of Fort Ransom, ND, said Bill Suess, director of the Department of the Department of Environmental Department of the Northern Dakota, a state agency. The size and cause of the spill of this city, about 78 miles southwest of Fargo, were not known, he said, and the authorities had not said when the pipeline could be back in activity.

Suess said that a pipeline employee working on a pumping station had heard a “mechanical blow”, then reported that the spill at 7:44 am, the pipeline, had been closed in around two minutes, he said.

“Currently, the spill is limited to an agricultural field south of the pumping station,” said Mr. Suess.

He said that a nearby stream had been isolated as a precaution, but that he had not been affected.

The pipeline system extends 2,687 miles. In 2024, he transported approximately 626,000 barrels of crude oil per day, according to South Bow, the infrastructure company which operates the pipeline. It was previously operated by TC Energy, the company behind the Keystone XL Pipeline project, which planned to develop the pipeline system but was opposed by environmentalists and native groups. The Keystone XL project was terminated by the company in 2021. South Bow was transferred from TC Energy in October 2024.

Solomiya Lyaskovska, spokesperson for South Bow, said that she had sent people and equipment to the rupture site.

Ms. Lyaskovska said in an email that the judgment had come “after the control center, the leak detection systems detected a pressure drop in the system”.

“The affected segment has been isolated and the resources of operations and containment were mobilized on the site,” she said. “Our main objective at the moment is the security of the personnel on site and the attenuation of the risks for the environment.”

In December 2022, more than 500,000 gallons of crude oil spread from the pipeline in the county of Washington, in Kan.

In October 2019, the pipeline disclosed approximately 383,000 gallons of crude oil in Edinburgh, ND, about 155 miles north of Fort Ransom. The state environmental regulators said that the spill covered half estimated at the wetland.