Company awaits fine over October oil spill

North Dakota regulators indicate a company has not been fined for the Keystone Pipeline oil spill that occurred in October outside the city of Edinburg. But a fine is coming.

A North Dakota Department of Environmental Quality told the Bismarck Tribune that the spill of 383,000 gallons of crude oil onto farm land on Oct. 29 is still under investigation.

DEQ Director Dave Glatt said that, because the spill came into contact with a wetlands area, it resulted in an automatic notice of violation. Penalties for oil spills are determined on a case-by-case basis and Glatt said he expects the process to take a couple months.

DEQ Spill Investigations program manager Bill Seuss said a number of factors are taken into account before the amount of a fine is determined, including how much oil was spilled, how much damage it caused, how quickly the company reported the spill and responded to the scene and how fast the spill was contained.

 Spills in the past in North Dakota resulted in fines ranging from a few thousand dollars up to several hundred thousand dollars.
 Source: Bismarck Tribune