TransCanada Restoring Keystone Pipeline Operations

TransCanada has started restoring operations along the Keystone crude oil pipeline, following a one-week shutdown caused by a leak at the Kansas Pumping Station in the US.

The pipeline transports crude oil from the Athabasca Oil Sands in Alberta, Canada to refineries in Illinois and Oklahoma, and further to the US Gulf coast.

The US Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) said last week that TransCanada can restart the export pipeline after immediate and long-term safety measures.

With repairs completed, PHMSA said TransCanada should perform an analysis of the failures, conduct metallurgical testing and review other components of the old system.

An outage on 29 May resulted in a ten-barrel crude spill caused by a faulty fitting at a pump station in Northeast Kansas, and, earlier in the month, a 500 barrel spill took place at a pump station in North Dakota.

TransCanada spokesman James Millar said the company is restarting Keystone, but a firm time-line on shipments cannot be ascertained at present.

The pipeline was pumping about 480,000bpd of crude before a 0.5in fitting faulted at the Kansas pumping station, where the clean up was completed on 2 June.