Cleanup starts for 3 million gallon North Dakota saltwater spill
Georgia-based Summit Midstream Partners detected the spill at a pipeline near Williston on January 6 and informed health officials.
The exact start date of the spill has not been disclosed.
Officials said they weren’t given a full account of the spill size until Tuesday.
The Summit operated pipeline spilled about 70,000 barrels of brine, a salty water drilling byproduct, into Blacktail Creek and the Little Muddy Creek.
Summit said Wednesday it pumped about 65,000 barrels of freshwater and brine out of Blacktail Creek, the smaller of the two impacted creeks, Fuel Fix said.
The company said the Missouri River may have potentially been contaminated as well.
State officials said it could take months to properly asses the full impact of the spill and stressed the scale of the contamination won’t be known until ice near the site begins to thaw.
Similar spills have taken years to cleanup.
North Dakota Department of Health said the spill is not currently threatening the safety of drinking water but local farmers have been told to keep livestock away from the affected creeks.
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Millions of gallons of saltwater leak into North Dakota
creek
WILLISTON, N.D.
(Reuters) - Almost 3 million gallons of
potentially toxic saltwater leaked from a western North Dakota pipeline into a
creek that feeds the Missouri River, the largest spill of its kind in the
state's history.
The leak, from a four-inch
saltwater pipeline operated by Summit Midstream Partners LP approximately 15
miles north of Williston, occurred earlier this month and was reported to state
officials on Jan. 7. It's not clear what caused the leak and an investigation
is underway, a Summit spokesman said.
Saltwater spills are not
uncommon in the oil patch, though the size of the Summit leak has caught many
by surprise. While the spill was first reported publicly on Jan. 8, a statement
late Wednesday from the Department of Health was the first to disclose the
spill's volume.
The impact of spill on the
local environment and the length of time needed for a cleanup is being
assessed, officials said, though mop-up operations from other smaller accidents
have taken years.
"Our goal is: you make the mess, you clean it up,"
said Dave Glatt, spokesman for the North Dakota Department of Health.
Saltwater is a byproduct of
the hydraulic fracturing process, or fracking. The water has a much higher
concentration of brine than regular saltwater, and can contain petroleum and
metal filings picked up during the fracking process.
Typically it is filtered and
re-injected back into the earth after oil is extracted, though pipelines or
trucks are required to transport it to injection sites.
The leak does not pose a
threat to drinking water supplies, the North Dakota Department of Health said
in a statement released on Wednesday. Summit said it does not believe wildlife
was affected.
Several boom barriers had
been placed in Blacktail Creek downstream from the broken pipe, according to a
Reuters reporter who visited the area on Thursday. Parts of the creek were
laced with a copper-colored sediment that did not resemble typical North Dakota
soil, the reporter said.
Remediation officials would
not allow access to the site of the damaged pipe, which was a few hundred yards
away from a small Lutheran church.
It is by far the largest
saltwater spill ever in North Dakota, eclipsing a leak of about 1 million
gallons last July from a Crestwood Midstream Partners pipeline into Lake
Sakakawea.
The saltwater from the
Summit line leaked into a creek that passes by Williston, considered the
capital of the state's oil boom, and flows into the Missouri River.
Williston's drinking water
comes from the Missouri River, though the city's water department has the
ability to turn off collection valves until any harmful material washes
downstream.
The state's Department of
Health said it is monitoring cleanup efforts, and the state's Department of
Mineral Resources is inspecting Summit's entire pipeline network, officials
said.
Summit has hired Stantec Inc
to clean up the spill. About 2 million gallons of water have been pulled so far
from one of the affected creeks, though it was not immediately clear if that amount
was all saltwater or normal water flow.
Remediation will be
difficult given that much of the affected area is covered by ice.
"We will continue to
work tirelessly to see that the cleanup is completed," Rene Casadaban,
Summit's operating chief, said in a statement.
It's not clear when the line
will re-open, though much of Summit's business involves natural gas transport,
meaning day-to-day operations should largely be unaffected.
Shares of Summit closed down
6 cents to $33.97 per share on Thursday. In the past three months the stock has
lost 29 percent of its value, part of a broader sell-off in the energy industry
amidst low oil and natural gas prices.