The latest leak in the Keystone oil pipeline in North Dakota on Tuesday continues the troubled history of the 15-year-old pipeline.
The 2,700-mile-long (4,350-kilometer-long) pipeline originates in Alberta, Canada, and carries heavy tar sands crude oil south across the Dakotas and Nebraska before splitting to carry oil both to refineries in Illinois and south to Oklahoma and Texas.
The Keystone Pipeline was constructed in 2010 at a cost of $5.2 billion. It was built by TC Energy, but it is now operated by South Bow as of 2024.
There have been 23 spills along the Keystone oil pipeline, including four in North Dakota.
One leak in 2022 in Kansas was the largest onshore oil spill in nine years. That rupture in the pipeline dumped about 14,000 barrels of crude oil into a creek running through rural pastureland in Washington County, about 150 miles (240 kilometers) northwest of Kansas City.
The leaks have varied in size, but in total …