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Audit recommend severity of spills have worsened
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The particular allow course of that allows TC Power Corp.’s Keystone pipeline to function within the U.S. at the next stress degree than is allowed below federal pipeline laws is being scrutinized as a part of an unbiased evaluation launched in response to issues raised about Keystone’s current observe document of spills.
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The third-party evaluation being carried out by the Oak Ridge Nationwide Laboratory started final August, in response to the Pipeline and Hazardous Supplies Security Administration (PHMSA).
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It was initiated following the discharge of a 2021 Authorities Accountability Workplace audit of Keystone accidents that pointed to information suggesting the severity of spills on the pipeline, which carries crude from Canada to refineries in Oklahoma and Texas, has worsened since 2017 — the identical yr the PHMSA granted TC Power the particular allow to completely function Keystone at the next stress degree.
Previous to the 14,000-barrel oil spill in Kansas on Dec. 7 — which resulted in a shutdown of the essential cross-border pipeline, key parts of which nonetheless stay closed — Keystone’s two largest spills had been 4,515 barrels in North Dakota in 2019 and 6,592 barrels in South Dakota in 2017.
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Keystone’s allow was developed to permit for protected operations at a most working stress of 80 per cent of the pipeline’s specified minimal yield power, fairly than the 72 per cent most governing all different hazardous liquid pipelines within the U.S. Specified minimal yield power represents the stress degree at which a metal pipeline will start to deform.
Keystone started working in 2010 however was solely granted the allow in 2017 following a technical evaluation that resulted in TC Power agreeing to abide by 51 circumstances laid out by the PHMSA. The pipeline regulator granted the allow after TC Power changed pipe affected by industry-wide pipeline high quality points, in response to the GAO audit.
Extra to come back…
• E-mail: mpotkins@postmedia.com | Twitter: mpotkins
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