TransCanada Keystone Pipeline popped 10th leak in less than a year last weekend in Dakotas; a 60-foot spout; 20,000 gallons spilled

TransCanada's Keystone tar sands oil pipeline leaked for the 10th time last weekend, spilling more than 500 barrels. This line has been in operation less than one year and was advertised as a safe, modern pipeline that would only have 1.4 spills per decade. Luckily, the leak was at a pumping station.

The Aberdeen News reported:

The oil shot about 60 feet into the air when the valve failed, according to landowner Bob Banderet, who lives about half a mile from the station.
     "It was higher than the cottonwood trees," he said.
     The company's risk analysis on file with the South Dakota Public Utilities Commission states that a leak of 50 barrels or more on the Keystone system would be expected once every seven years. The pipeline began moving oil last June. Cunha said the estimate does not apply to pump stations, which were not included in the risk analysis. Saturday's spill was the 10th release of oil on the Keystone line, all of them at pump stations, he said.
     Sargent County Commissioner Bill Anderson praised the company's response to the spill. However, he said, "I have to confess: I did not anticipate that we would have a problem this soon."

TransCanada, which is now steamrolling farmers in order to build a similar tar sands pipeline across Nebraska's vulnerable Sandhills on porous soil above North America's largest underground aquifer, has recently has sent uncooperative Nebraska landowners eminent domain / land condemnation letters even before having federal permits in hand, prompting concern from Nebraska Senator Mike Johanns, who is hardly a tree hugger.

The American Petroleum Institute is currently running radio ads in Nebraska markets claiming that 342,000 American jobs could be created in the wake of a Keystone XL pipeline. The US State Department has put the number at just a few hundred, and many of those would be temporary.

Last month the New York Times opined that "Moving ahead would be a huge error. From all of the evidence, Keystone XL is not only environmentally risky, it is unnecessary. "

Below: Paul Blackburn of Plains Justice and Jane Kleeb of Bold Nebraska explain the consequences of the proposed TransCanada oil pipelines.