The operator of the Keystone oil pipeline restarted the system Monday. A spill onto farmland in North Dakota last week shut down part of the line. Now the pipeline is back up and running—with federal officials watching closely.
The 2,689-mile Keystone Pipeline carries crude oil from Alberta, Canada. It delivers the oil to refineries in Illinois, Oklahoma, and Texas. On April 9, a section ruptured.
The spill occurred in a field north of tiny Fort Ransom, North Dakota. The town—population 91 as of 2020—is located in a forested area known for scenic views and outdoor recreation.
The affected part of the line ran from Alberta to points in Illinois and a liquid tank terminal in Oklahoma. The line remained open between Oklahoma and Texas’ Gulf Coast, according to a map from South Bow. The energy company has managed the pipeline since 2024.
Inspectors estimate the spill at 147,000 gallons of crude oil, or 3,500 barrels. As of early Friday, vacuum trucks had recovered 49,140 gallons, according to the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA).
The last major Keystone Pipeline spill occurred in Kansas in December 2022. The 14,000-barrel loss made it the largest spill in the pipeline’s history. Sections were offline for a little over three weeks before it resumed operating at a lower pressure.
Workers moved quickly to address this month’s smaller spill. They have already dug out the failed section and replaced it. The pipe will go to a lab in Houston for testing.
The North Dakota Department of Environmental Quality set up berms to stop the surface spread of oil, according to Bismark’s KFYR-TV.
South Bow plans to put pressure restrictions on the pipeline’s Canadian sections too. Officials from the company have shared those details with Canadian officials. The company now says it has finished all repairs, inspections, and testing at the spill site. PHMSA signed off on the restart plan.
South Bow watched weather conditions before it began Monday’s “carefully controlled restart.” Restarted operations include 24/7 monitoring, reduced operating pressures, cleanup of the spill site, and compliance with federal officials’ requirements.
The company’s update did not mention a cause of the spill. South Bow says it will share findings when available. An employee heard a “mechanical bang” and shut down the pipeline within two minutes, a state spill response official previously said.
In ordinary times, an oil pipeline shutdown would cause increased prices at the pump. But gas prices have fallen in almost every state in the last week. That decrease is due to the recent oil price drop because of tariff and trade war concerns, says Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis for GasBuddy, a gas price tracking app.
“I wouldn’t have expected this to really have much of an impact anyway,” he says. “But with oil prices actively having plummeted over the last week, yes, I would say that the decline was more than offset.”
