North Dakota officials are dealing with a leak in the original Keystone pipeline, one that passes through Oklahoma and six other states as it carries oil to Gulf coast refineries.
The leak covers a quarter-mile swath near the town of Edinburg in Walsh County. Operations were shut down by the pipeline owner TC Energy and the cause is still under investigation, according to a report by the Associated Press.
The Calgary, Alberta-based company formerly known as TransCanada did not immediately respond to phone messages seeking comment.
State regulators were on the scene and estimated that the area of the spill was 1,500 feet long by 15 feet wide. They indicated some wetlands were affected, but not any sources of drinking water.
Crude oil began flowing through the $5.2 billion pipeline in 2010. It is part of a system that also is to include the proposed $8 billion Keystone XL pipeline designed to transport the oil from western Canada to terminals on the Gulf Coast.
Earlier Tuesday, the U.S. State Department held the sole public meeting on a new environmental review of the long-stalled proposal. A federal judge blocked it last year, saying more environmental study was needed.
The original Keystone is designed to carry crude oil across Saskatchewan and Manitoba, and through North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas and Missouri on the way to refineries in Patoka, Illinois, and Cushing, Oklahoma. It has experienced problems with spills in the past, including one in 2011 of more than 14,000 gallons of oil in southeastern North Dakota, near the South Dakota border.
In 2017, the pipeline leaked an estimated 210,000 gallons of oil onto agricultural land in northeastern South Dakota, in a rural area near the North Dakota border.