TC Energy’s Keystone Pipeline Approved for Reopening

Keystone Pipeline operator TC Energy Corp. has been given the green light to reopen the last section of the pipeline that has been closed since the largest oil spill in the pipeline’s history on December 7.

On Friday, the company announced that the U.S. Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration has approved a restarting plan for the pipeline section that extends from the south of Steele City, Nebraska, to Cushing, Oklahoma.

As previously stated, the company’s restart process includes thorough testing and inspections and will take many days. The report did not specify a timeframe for when the pipeline would be fully functional again.

The Keystone pipeline system, which extends 4,324 km and transports Canadian and U.S. crude to markets in North America, was immediately shut down by TC Energy after the leak, which spilled 14,000 barrels of oil into a creek in Washington County, Kan.

On December 14 TC Energy partially reopened the pipeline at a lower pressure, although the segment from just south of Steele City, Nebraska to Cushing, Oklahoma was still unavailable.

The cause of the incident, which is currently being investigated by TC Energy and U.S. regulators, made headlines as it was the worst oil spill in the Keystone pipeline history, surpassing both the 6,600-barrel North Dakota spill in 2017 and the 4,500-barrel South Dakota spill in 2019.

The report concluded that issues with the pipeline’s construction, installation, or manufacturing were to blame for the 2017 Keystone spill while manufacturing flaws in the original pipe were to blame for the 2019 North Dakota catastrophe.

Original source material for this article taken from here