Trans Mountain shut after spill in B.C.
The Trans Mountain pipeline was shut after an oil spill was discovered at a pump station in British Columbia early Saturday.
Workers from the stateowned pipeline are responding to a release at the Sumas Pump Station in Abbotsford, B.C., after an alarm went off at the pipeline control centre, the company said in a release posted on its website. The line was immediately shut down, and a cleanup is underway.
Trans Mountain estimates as much as 1,195 barrels of light crude spilled, the company said. The statement says the pipeline was expected to restart Sunday after all safety protocols were completed.
The Trans Mountain pipeline carries about 300,000 barrels a day of crude oil and some fuels from Alberta to the Vancouver area, where it connects to a marine export terminal as well as to another line that supplies refineries in Washington state.
Trans Mountain has in
A NUMBER OF STEPS ... NEED TO HAPPEN BEFORE WE CAN SAFELY RESTART THE PIPELINE.
itiated an investigation into the spill, the company said in an email. The incident is probably related to a small, 2.5-centimetre diameter piece of pipe and the line was carrying mixed sweet crude at the time of the spill, it said.
The local community isn’t threatened and the spill has been contained, according to the company.
“Right now, we are focused on cleanup,” Trans Mountain said. “There are a number of steps and procedures that need to happen before we can safely restart the pipeline.”
The incident comes at a sensitive time for Trans Mountain, as work on a planned expansion is under way amid fierce opposition from some residents of British Columbia, including Indigenous communities, who argue the pipeline is a threat to the environment. Canada’s federal government purchased the pipeline two years ago from Kinder Morgan Inc. after the company threatened to pull the plug on a planned expansion after years of regulatory and legal challenges.
On Sunday, Chief Dalton Silver of the Sumas First Nation issued a statement that it was concerned about preventing further impacts to First Nations territory.
“This is the fourth time in 15 years that this pipeline has had a spill on our land. The proposed Trans Mountain expansion route would see an additional pipeline crossing one of our sacred sites, Lightning Rock, at two spots. We will do absolutely everything we can to prevent this from happening — an oil spill at Lighting Rock would be horrific for our people.”