Pipeline break spills 45K gallons of diesel fuel

A diesel pipeline in Wyoming owned by a company that’s being sued by federal prosecutors over previous spills in two other states cracked open and released more than 45,000 gallons of fuel, a state official said Friday.

Cleanup work is ongoing from the spill that was discovered by the pipeline’s operator on July 27, said Joe Hunter, Emergency Response

Coordinator with the Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality.

The fuel spilled on private ranchland near the small community of Sussex in eastern Wyoming, he said.

Contaminated soil was being excavated and placed into a temporary staging area, and it will be spread onto a nearby dirt road where the fuel is expected to largely evaporate, Hunter said.

The line is operated by Bridger Pipeline, a subsidiary of Casperbased

True companies, according to an accident report submitted to the U.S. Coast Guard’s National Response Center.

The company initially reported only 420 gallons) had spilled, but later revised its estimate to 45,150 gallons, according to a National Response Center database.

Bridger Pipeline spokesperson Bill Salvin said the initial figure was based on what company personnel saw on the ground and reported immediately. The volume estimate increased as the site was excavated, he said.

True and its subsidiaries have a long history of spills. In May, federal prosecutors in Montana alleged that representatives of Bridger Pipeline had concealed from regulators problems with a pipeline that broke beneath the Yellowstone River near the city of Glendive in 2015.

The break spewed more than 50,000 gallons of crude into the river and fouled Glendive’s drinking water supply.