After spill, pipeline upgrades now a must

BILLINGS, Mont. — Federal regulators on Friday ordered a pipeline company to make major upgrades to a line that spilled almost 40,000 gallons of oil into Montana’s Yellowstone River and fouled a local water supply.

The order comes after Bridger Pipeline of Casper, Wyo., announced plans to bury its line deeper beneath the Yellowstone to protect against future accidents.

The Department of Transportation order would make that improvement mandatory and require identical action where the line runs beneath the Poplar River in northeast Montana.

The cause of the Jan. 17 spill remains under investigation. It prompted a five-day shutdown of drinking water services for 6,000 people in the city of Glendive after oil got into a treatment plant.

Cleanup crews so far have made minimal progress recovering oil from the ice-covered river.

The 340-mile line delivers crude from the Bakken oil-field patch of North Dakota and Montana to a terminal in Baker, Mont., about 55 miles south of Glendive.