Canada’s TC Energy on Friday said a 14,000-barrel oil spill from its Keystone pipeline in rural Kansas in December was primarily due to a progressive fatigue crack, which originated during the construction of the pipeline.
The Calgary-based company released the findings after receiving an independent third-party root cause failure analysis (RCFA), as required by regulators.
Keystone’s spill into a Kansas creek was the biggest U.S. oil spill in nine years and prompted a 21-day shutdown of a portion of the 622,000 barrel-per-day pipeline, which ships crude from Alberta to U.S. refineries.
TC said it has recovered 98% of the spilled product from the pipeline and cleaned up 90% of the Mill Creek shoreline.
“We are unwavering in our commitment to fully remediate the site and are taking action on the recommendations from the RCFA,” said Richard Prior, president of liquids pipelines at TC Energy in a statement.
(Reporting by Nia Williams in British Columbia and Deep Vakil and Brijesh Patel in Bengaluru; Editing by Chris Reese and Chizu Nomiyama)