Severe Oil Leaks Worsened Keystone Pipeline Spill Record, GAO Says

The decision to revoke the Keystone license applauded Democrats but was bitterly criticized by Republicans.

Jane Kleeb, chair of the Democratic Party of Nebraska that has opposed pipelines, including Keystone XL for years, said the GAO report highlighted issues that environmental groups had previously expressed concern about. But having the information in an official government report would help people in future pipeline protests, she said.

“These are not new weapons per se,” Kleeb said of the report’s description of faulty material and poor construction. “But I am deeply grateful that this is now on the official record.”

The study was commissioned by Chamber of Transport and Infrastructure Speaker Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.), Commerce President Frank Pallone (DN.J.) and other Democrats in November 2019 at the aftermath of the two major Keystone oil spills.

“The GAO report validates President Biden’s decision to revoke the license to construct the Keystone XL pipeline,” DeFazio and Pallone said in a joint statement. “President Biden was clearly right to question this operator’s ability to build a safe and resilient pipeline, and we support his decision to put the health and environment of Americans above the interests of industry.”

Republicans said Biden’s Keystone XL decision cost their states construction jobs. Neither the Republican ranking members of the committee commented on the GAO report.

The GAO study showed that the US sections of TC Energy’s 2,700-mile Keystone pipeline had a failure rate in line with the national average during its first six years of service, most of Keystone’s 22 accidents in 2010. to 2020 releasing less than 50 barrels of oil.

Corn two major spills in 2017 and 2019 that spilled nearly 12,000 barrels of oil combined “put TC Energy worse than the national average over the past five years” through 2020. The 2017 crash in South Dakota was caused by faulty pipeline materials and poor pipeline construction, while the 2019 North Dakota accident was caused by defects in the manufacture of the original pipes, according to inspections cited in the GAO study.

Problems found with the pipeline material and the construction practices leading up to the spills have prompted the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration – the part of the Department of Transportation that regulates pipeline safety – to step up its inspections of early construction activities, the Department said. GAO.

“We have taken significant steps over the past few years to implement measures to strengthen our approach to the security and integrity of our system with a focus on incident prevention,” said Leslie Kass , executive vice president of TC Energy’s technical center, in a statement. video response to GAO report. “These actions have contributed to a significant improvement in our safety performance, with zero high impact incidents in 18 months.”