Company: Regulators OK reopening of Kansas pipeline segment

TOPEKA, Kan. — (AP) — The operator of a pipeline that spilled about 14,000 bathtubs’ value of heavy crude oil right into a northeastern Kansas creek mentioned Friday that it has permission from U.S. authorities regulators to reopen the repaired phase the place the rupture occurred.

Canada-based TC Vitality didn’t say precisely when it could reopen the part of its Keystone pipeline system from Steele Metropolis close to the Nebraska-Kansas border to Cushing in northern Oklahoma. The corporate mentioned it can have crews working via the Christmas vacation and likewise conducting “rigorous testing and inspections.”

“This may take a number of days,” the corporate mentioned in an announcement. “We’ll proceed to prioritize the security of individuals and the surroundings.”

The Dec. 7 spill compelled the corporate to close down the Keystone system and dumped about 14,000 barrels of crude right into a creek working via rural pastureland in Washington County, about 150 miles (240 kilometers) northwest of Kansas Metropolis. Every barrel is 42 gallons, the scale of a family bathtub.

The corporate and authorities officers have mentioned ingesting water provides weren’t affected, and nobody was evacuated. Nevertheless, Kansas Metropolis’s KCUR-FM reported this week that the Kansas Division of Well being and Setting discovered chemical compounds from the spill downstream previous two earthen dams constructed to include the oil, probably endangering animals that ingest it.

TC Vitality reopened many of the 2,700-mile (4,345-kilometer) Keystone system final week. The system carries crude oil extracted from tar sands in western Canada to the Gulf Coast, with a spur additionally shifting crude to south-central Illinois.

The Kansas spill was the biggest onshore in 9 years and bigger than 22 earlier spills on the Keystone system mixed, based on U.S. Division of Transportation knowledge. The corporate obtained permission to reopen the pipeline throughout Kansas and into northern Oklahoma from the Division of Transportation’s pipeline security arm.

Considerations that spills may pollute waterways spurred opposition to plans by TC Vitality to construct one other crude oil pipeline in the identical system, the 1,200-mile (1,900-kilometer) Keystone XL, throughout Montana, South Dakota and Nebraska. President Joe Biden’s cancelation of a allow for the venture led the corporate to tug the plug final 12 months.

The corporate has not recognized the Kansas spill’s trigger. Zack Pistora, who lobbies on the Kansas Statehouse for the Sierra Membership, mentioned the pipeline phase should not reopen till the trigger is thought.

“Is not the following spill simply an accident ready to occur?” he mentioned in an interview Friday.

The corporate mentioned it has eliminated the ruptured pipeline part and despatched it to an impartial lab for evaluation. It additionally mentioned it had recovered virtually 7,600 barrels of oil, a bit of greater than half of what was leaked.

In the meantime, some Democrats within the Republican-controlled Legislature need to rethink the state’s coverage of exempting corporations from native property taxes for 10 years in the event that they construct pipelines via Kansas to spur vitality growth. Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly instructed The Topeka Capital-Journal in an interview this week that the coverage was “a giant mistake” and may have been reconsidered “a very long time in the past.”

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