HUFFPO
About 150 miles from where thousands have protested for months that the Dakota Access pipeline could threaten a Sioux tribe’s water supply, a pipeline in the western part of North Dakota has spilled more than 130,000 gallons of oil into a creek, state officials said.
In all, the Belle Fourche pipeline lost 4,200 barrels of crude oil, or more than 176,000 gallons, before operators shut it down, according to state Department of Health spokeswoman Jennifer Skjod. Most of the oil flowed into the Ash Coulee Creek near Belfield, Skjod said.
A blizzard last week has impeded efforts to assess the spill’s extent and its impact on the environment. The creek is frozen. Officials are investigating when the pipeline, which typically carried 1,000 barrels of oil per day, started to leak.
“We have no estimate on when or if it will be operational,” Skjod said of the pipleline.
The Associated Press reported the company has declared 36 other spills since 2006, totaling more than 320,000 gallons of petroleum products.
North Dakota regulators said Tuesday that nearly 75% of an estimated 4,200 barrels of crude oil that leaked from a pipeline has flowed into a creek, contaminating 5.4 miles of the waterway in a remote area in the westernmost part of the state.
A six-inch-diameter pipeline operated by Belle Fourche Pipeline, a unit of Casper, Wyo.-based True Oil LLC, spilled the oil into Ash Coulee Creek northwest of Dickinson, N.D., the state department of health said. The leak has been contained and the cause is under investigation, it said.
The spill is the latest in the state’s Bakken Shale oil-producing zone that involve crude oil or related materials such as salty wastewater pumped out of the ground in the process of drilling for oil and gas.
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A landowner initially discovered the spill about 16 miles northwest of the town of Belfield on Dec. 5.
Electronic monitoring equipment failed to detect the rupture, but it's not clear why, according to Wendy Owen, a spokeswoman for Casper, Wyoming-based True Cos., which operates the pipeline.