Preliminary findings show a fatigue crack caused a Keystone Pipeline oil spill in North Dakota

BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — Trucks and workers started a cleanup effort at the site of a spill of the Keystone oil pipeline in rural North Dakota. The cause of the spill and the timing to get the pipeline back online remain unclear. Keystone’s entire system remains shut down after the spill on Tuesday (April 8, 2025). The pipeline company estimated the spill to amount to around 3,500 barrels, or 147,000 gallons. The spill is contained to an agricultural field. A farmer says he can smell the crude oil when the wind blows from a certain direction. He also says the spill site has been a beehive of activity.

BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — Trucks and workers started cleaning up the Keystone oil pipeline spill in rural North Dakota, though its cause and the project timing is unclear.

The pipeline ruptured Tuesday morning (April 8, 2025) in southeastern North Dakota and was shut down within two minutes by an employee who heard a mechanical bang. An aerial photo released Wednesday shows a black, pondlike pool of oil suspended in a partially snowy field that’s traversed by tire tracks.

A farmer told The Associated Press he could smell the scent of crude oil, carried by the wind.

South Bow, a liquid pipelines business that manages the pipeline, estimated the spill’s volume at 3,500 barrels, or 147,000 gallons. Keystone’s entire system remains shut down.

What caused the spill?

That’s not yet known. The company is investigating what caused the spill and how long repairs might take, spokesperson Kristin Anderson said Wednesday.

The spill is not a minor one, said Paul Blackburn, a policy analyst with Bold Alliance, an environmental and landowners group that fought the pipeline’s extension, called Keystone XL.

The estimated volume of 3,500 barrels, or 147,000 gallons of crude oil, is equal to 16 tanker trucks of oil, he said. That estimate could increase over time, he added.

Blackburn said the bigger picture is what he called the Keystone Pipeline’s history of spills at a higher rate than other pipelines. He compared Keystone to the Dakota Access oil pipeline since the latter came online in June 2017. In that period, Keystone’s system has spilled nearly 1.2 million gallons (4.5 million liters) of oil, while Dakota Access spilled 1,282 gallons (4,853 liters), Blackburn said.

In its update, the company said the pipeline “was operating within its design and regulatory approval requirements at the time of the incident.”

Generally, underground oil pipelines can have a number of stressors, said Ramanan Krishnamoorti, vice president for energy and innovation at the University of Houston.

Those include corrosive elements from the liquid within the pipeline, changing temperatures, moving soil, movement from trains or construction equipment on the surface and stress to bends, turns and joints in the pipeline, he said.

The 2,700-mile (4,350-kilometer) pipeline originates in Alberta, Canada, and carries heavy tar sands crude oil south across the Dakotas and Nebraska before splitting to carry oil both to refineries in Illinois and south to Oklahoma and Texas.

The $5.2 billion Keystone Pipeline was built in 2010. TC Energy built the pipeline which is operated by South Bow as of last year.

How has the company responded?

The spill is contained to an agricultural field. In an update Wednesday, South Bow said it has multiple on-site vacuum trucks beginning to recover the oil. Continuous air quality monitoring is underway. The pipeline’s affected segment is isolated, and the company said it’s evaluating plans for a return to service.

Phone messages and emails were left Wednesday with the state Department of Environmental Quality and the Ransom County sheriff about the spill and response.

Myron Hammer, an adjacent landowner who farms the land affected by the spill, said it hasn’t yet adversely affected him, aside from the smell of crude oil or sulfur carrying when the wind blows in a certain direction. The pipeline company appears to be doing its due diligence to fix the problem, he said.

There’s been a lot of truck traffic bringing equipment to the scene, he said. His house is about 1.75 miles (2.82 kilometers) away.

“It’s become a beehive of activity in the proximity there,” Hammer said. Some of his property is being used as a staging area for equipment. He said he’ll have to cancel plans to farm on roughly 5 or more acres of land impacted by the spill.

The spill site is north of Fort Ransom, a tiny town in a hilly, forested area known for scenic views and outdoor recreation. A state park and hiking trails are nearby.

The rupture in North Dakota occurred within 2 1/2 years of a December 2022 rupture in rural northeastern Kansas that dumped about 13,000 barrels of crude oil into a creek. The company attributed the rupture to a faulty weld in a pipe bend, saying it caused a crack that grew over time under stress.

A report drafted by an outside engineering consulting firm for U.S. government regulators later said the bend had been “overstressed” since its installation in December 2010, likely because construction activity itself altered the land around the pipe. A July 2021 report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office said the four biggest previous spills on the Keystone system were caused by issues tied to its original design, its construction or the manufacturing of the pipe.

Will gas prices increase?

They very well might, though energy experts have different outlooks.

The pipeline’s shutdown could quickly raise gas prices in the Midwest and could have more effects on diesel and jet fuel because refineries will have less of the crude oil they need, Krishnamoorti said.

Higher-priced diesel could lead to higher grocery prices because diesel trucks transport those products, he said.

Other experts said the refineries likely have a supply of crude oil already on hand that would help protect against immediate impacts of the shutdown.

“Even if the pipeline gets cut off completely for, say, 2 or 3 weeks, they have enough crude (oil) to continue refining for gasoline,” said Mark LaCour, editor-in-chief of the Oil and Gas Global Network.

Gas prices increased for a third consecutive week in the U.S., but that could change as oil prices drop amid the escalating global trade war.

BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — The nearly 2,700-mile Keystone oil pipeline was shut down Tuesday morning (April 8, 2025) after it ruptured in North Dakota, halting the flow of millions of gallons of crude oil from Canada to refineries in the U.S. and potentially leading to higher gasoline prices. It wasn’t clear what caused the rupture of the underground pipeline Tuesday morning or the amount of crude oil released into the field. Officials say an employee working at the site near Fort Ransom heard a “mechanical bang” and shut down the pipeline within about two minutes. Oil surfaced about 300 yards south of the pump station in a field. An energy analyst says the pipeline’s shutdown could quickly lead to higher gasoline prices in the Midwest.

BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — The nearly 2,700-mile Keystone oil pipeline was shut down Tuesday morning (April 8, 2025) after it ruptured in North Dakota, halting the flow of millions of gallons of crude oil from Canada to refineries in the U.S. and potentially leading to higher gasoline prices.

South Bow, a liquid pipeline business that manages the pipeline, said it shut down the pipeline after control center leak detection systems detected a pressure drop in the system. The company estimated that 3,500 barrels of oil were released and said the spill was confined to an agricultural field in a rural area, about 60 miles (97 kilometers) southwest of Fargo.

“The affected segment has been isolated, and operations and containment resources have been mobilized to site,” the company said. “Our primary focus right now is the safety of onsite personnel and mitigating risk to the environment.”

The pipeline transported an average 624,000 barrels — or more than 26 million gallons — per day in 2024, according to Canadian regulators. It stretches 2,689 miles (4,327 kilometers) from Alberta, Canada, to Texas.

Prices at the gas pump could rise in the coming days

The pipeline’s shutdown could quickly lead to higher gasoline prices in the Midwest, said Ramanan Krishnamoorti, vice president for energy and innovation at the University of Houston.

It could raise prices at the pump within one or two days, but will have a greater impact on diesel and jet fuel, Krishnamoorti said. The Keystone pipeline transports a large amount of a unique, heavy crude that only is available from limited sources, he said.

“The refineries run on blends of crude so that they can get the product line that they want to deliver, whether it is gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, etc., and not having the supply of heavy crude is going to tilt their ability to make diesel and jet fuel,” he said. “They will make less of diesel and jet fuel when they have less of the heavy crude.”

Higher diesel costs could lead to grocery price increases because diesel trucks transport those products, he said.

The lead petroleum analyst at gasoline price tracker GasBuddy, Patrick De Haan, said that typically refineries have at least a few days supply of crude oil on hand that will insulate them from immediate impacts from the shut down. But if the shutdown continues more than a few days or a week it could become problematic.

Mark LaCour, editor-in-chief of the Oil and Gas Global Network, said he doesn’t expect gas prices to immediately increase because the major refineries served by the Keystone pipeline have millions of barrels in storage.

“Even if the pipeline gets cut off completely for, say, 2 or 3 weeks, they have enough crude to continue refining for gasoline,” LaCour said.

The pipeline was shut down within two minutes of a ‘bang’

It wasn’t clear what caused the rupture of the underground pipeline. An employee working at the site near Fort Ransom heard a “mechanical bang” and shut down the pipeline within about two minutes, said Bill Suess, spill investigation program manager with the North Dakota Department of Environmental Quality.

Oil surfaced about 300 yards (274 meters) south of a pump station in a field and emergency personnel responded, Suess said.

No people or structures were affected by the spill, he said. A nearby stream that only flows during part of the year was not affected but was blocked off and isolated as a precaution, he said. The Pipelines and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration is sending a team to investigate the cause of the leak.

Fort Ransom, a city of less than 100 people, is in a hilly, forested area of southeastern North Dakota known for scenic views and outdoor recreation. A state park and hiking trails are nearby.

It’s unclear at what rate the 30-inch (0.8-meter) pipeline was flowing, but even at two minutes “it’s going to have a fairly good volume,” Suess said. “But … we’ve had much, much bigger spills,” including one involving the same pipeline a few years ago in Walsh County, North Dakota, he said.

“I don’t think it’s going to be that huge,” Suess said.

The pipeline has a history of past ruptures

The Keystone Pipeline was constructed in 2010 at a cost of $5.2 billion and carries crude oil across Saskatchewan and Manitoba through North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas and Missouri to refineries in Illinois, Oklahoma and Texas. Though the pipeline was constructed by TC Energy, it is now managed by South Bow as of 2024.

A proposed extension to the pipeline called Keystone XL would have transported crude oil to refineries on the Gulf Coast, but it was ultimately abandoned by the company in 2021 after years of protests from environmental activists and Indigenous communities over environmental concerns.

After a spill, the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration is responsible for investigating the root cause of the issue and any lack of compliance. The agency, which regulates liquid and natural gas pipelines, lost several senior-level executives earlier this year as part of President Donald Trump’s federal cuts.

PHMSA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Bill Caram, executive director at industry watchdog Pipeline Safety Trust, said the organization already was “an under-resourced, underfunded agency.”

“To lose anyone will have an impact on safety,” he said.

After the last major Keystone pipeline spill in Kansas in December 2022, sections of the pipeline were offline for a little over three weeks before it resumed operating at a lower pressure.

That spill of nearly 13,000 barrels of oil flowed into a creek traversing a pasture. An engineering consulting firm said the bend in the pipeline at the site had been “overstressed” since being installed in 2010, likely because of construction activity altering the land around the pipe. TC Energy said a faulty weld in the line’s bend caused a crack that exacerbated over time.

The Pipeline Safety Trust said this latest leak adds to the troubled history of the Keystone pipeline, which has had 13 significant incidents in the 15 years it has been operating.