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The latest leak in the Keystone oil pipeline continues its troubled history
By JOSH FUNK - Apr 08, 2025, 07:03 PM ET
Last Updated - Apr 08, 2025, 07:03 PM EDT
The latest leak in the Keystone oil pipeline in North Dakota on Tuesday continues the troubled history of the 15-year-old pipeline
The latest leak in the Keystone oil pipeline in North Dakota on Tuesday continues the troubled history of the 15-year-old pipeline.
The 2,700-mile-long (4,350-kilometer-long) 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.
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The Keystone Pipeline was constructed in 2010 at a cost of $5.2 billion. It was built by TC Energy, but it is now operated by South Bow as of 2024.
There have been 23 spills along the Keystone oil pipeline, including four in North Dakota.
One leak in 2022 in Kansas was the largest onshore oil spill in nine years. That rupture in the pipeline dumped about 14,000 barrels of crude oil into a creek running through rural pastureland in Washington County, about 150 miles (240 kilometers) northwest of Kansas City.
The leaks have varied in size, but in total the Keystone pipeline has spilled more than 1 million gallons of crude oil over the years.
South Bow estimated that 3,500 barrels spilled in this latest leak in North Dakota.
The Pipeline Safety Trust advocacy group said that a 2021 report by the Government Accountability Office concluded that preventable construction issues contributed to more spills on the Keystone pipeline than on similar pipelines. The report also said that the pipeline's largest spills were “caused by issues related to the original design, manufacturing of the pipe, or construction of the pipeline.”
One example of that is the Kansas leak. The Pipelines and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration determined that leak was caused due to the rupture of a weld that came from a fabrication facility.
“Keystone’s incident history illustrates the problematic pipeline’s systemic issues,” Pipeline Safety Trust Executive Director Bill Caram said.
When the original Keystone pipeline was proposed and built there was little controversy about the project, but it was a different story a few years later when TC Energy proposed building a second pipeline called the Keystone XL pipeline.
That pipeline drew years of protests from environmental activists and landowners who worried that a spill could foul their land and water. Keystone XL was ultimately abandoned by the company in 2021 after President Joe Biden refused to approve a permit for it. President Donald Trump had tried to revive it during his first term, but Biden's decision ultimately killed the project.
Climate change activists viewed the expansion of oil sands development as an environmental disaster that could speed up global warming as the fuel is burned. That turned Keystone into a flashpoint in the climate debate, and it became the focus of rallies and protests in Washington, D.C., and other cities.
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