The rupture released about 13,000 barrels of heavy crude oil into a stream that runs through a rural pasture in Washington County, Kansas.
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) – A proposed legal settlement with the U.S. government would require the operator of the Keystone pipeline system to pay a civil penalty of $26.9 million for a major oil spill in Kansas in December 2022 and spend about $40 million more to prevent future accidents.
The settlement would resolve claims by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Kansas that Canada-based South Bow violated U.S. and state clean water laws. The rupture dumped nearly 13,000 barrels of heavy crude oil into a stream that runs through a rural pasture in Washington County, Kansas, about 150 miles (241 kilometers) northwest of Kansas City.
The accident was the largest onshore U.S. crude oil spill in nine years and surpassed all 22 previous ones on the same pipeline system combined, according to a 2021 report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office. The total amount of oil spilled would have almost filled an Olympic-sized swimming pool.
South Bow also will pay Kansas more than $3 million for environmental restoration projects under a proposed decree filed Friday in U.S. District Court in Kansas. A judge would have to approve the proposed decree after a 30-day public comment period.
“The oil spill covered land and water, rendering the waterway lifeless and useless and requiring extensive cleanup and repair,” Jeffrey Hall, EPA’s assistant administrator for its office of enforcement, said in a statement. “The substantial penalty reflects the seriousness of the environmental damage.”
South Bow spokeswoman Sara Hunter said in an emailed statement Sunday that the company “proactively” began its response to the spill before receiving formal directives from government officials, including “comprehensive environmental remediation” completed by February 2024. She also said that since the spill, the company has traveled more than 12,000 miles (19,310 kilometers to examine pipelines) to examined pipeline overflow. make repairs where necessary.
“This work reflects our continued commitment to the safe and reliable operation of our pipeline system and to the continued strengthening of pipeline integrity,” she said.
The company that built the pipeline, TC Energy, spun off from South Bow as a separate firm in 2024 after the Kansas cleanup was completed.
No pipeline workers or local residents were injured in the spill, and officials said public water supplies were not affected.
However, a complaint filed Friday by the US government along with the proposed settlement said more than 2,700 animals were harmed or killed. The area is home to an endangered species, the long-eared bat.
In a May 2023 report to the US government, an engineering consulting firm said a bend in the Keystone system where the spill occurred had been “overstressed” since its installation in December 2010 — likely because the construction activity itself changed the soil around the pipe. The complaint filed Friday in court said the soil under the pipe was “irregularly compacted” and that while the company re-excavated the site in 2013, it did not replace that section of pipe.
The 2,689-mile (4,327-kilometer) Keystone system transports thick, Canadian tar sands crude to refineries in Illinois, Oklahoma and Texas.
In April, President Donald Trump gave South Bow and another company the green light to build a second pipeline from Canada to Wyoming, a smaller version of a massive $8 billion pipeline project known as Keystone XL blocked by former President Joe Biden’s administration in 2021 over environmental concerns.
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