WASHINGTON, Kansas, (Reuters) – Emergency crews yesterday were preparing to labour through the weekend to clean up the largest U.S. crude oil spill in nearly a decade, with workers descending on this farming community from as far away as Mississippi.
A heavy odour of oil hung in the air, according to a Reuters witness, as tractor trailers ferried generators, lighting and ground mats to a muddy site. Federal investigators were at the scene trying to help determine what caused a leak of some 14,000 barrels of oil from Western Canada, an official said.
Pipeline operator TC Energy TRP.TO on Friday said it was evaluating plans to restart the line, which carries 622,000 barrels of oil per day to U.S. refineries and export hubs. It did not provide details of the breach or when a restart could begin.
The outage could affect oil inventories at the Cushing, Oklahoma, storage hub and cut crude supplies to refining centers in the Central U.S. and Gulf Coast, analysts said.
“We’re beginning to get a better sense of the clean up efforts that will need to be undertaken in the longer-term,” said Kellen Ashford, spokesperson for the EPA Region 7, which includes Kansas.
Environmental specialists labored in near freezing temperatures and crews set up equipment to allow operations to continue for days.
TC Energy aims to restart on Saturday a pipeline segment that sends oil to Illinois, and another portion that brings oil to Cushing on Dec. 20, Bloomberg News reported, citing sources. Reuters has not verified those details.
This is the third spill of several thousand barrels of crude on the pipeline since it opened in 2010. A previous Keystone spill had caused the pipeline to remain shut for about two weeks.