Feds: Few Montana Pipeline Plans Account For River Risks

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Federal officials investigating a pipeline break that spilled 1,500 barrels of oil into a Montana river said Wednesday that few companies take river erosion and other risks into account when evaluating pipeline safety.

In recent months, several companies have completed or made plans for significant upgrades to pipelines across major waterways in Montana and adjoining parts of Wyoming and Idaho.

Among those were an estimated $20 million in improvements to Exxon’s 12-inch Silvertip line, which broke July 1 during flooding on the Yellowstone River, fouling an estimated 70 miles of shoreline.

But more needs to be done, said Chris Hoidal, western region director for the federal Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration.

“Things are a lot better than they were six months ago. There’s still a long way to go,” Hoidal said Wednesday during a meeting of Montana’s Oil Pipeline Safety Review Council.

Investigators suspect river scouring caused by flooding on the Yellowstone was responsible for the Exxon Mobil spill near Laurel.

The spill allowed crude to gush into the flooding Yellowstone River for almost an hour. In addition to recently completed pipeline upgrades, Exxon is spending an estimated $115 million to clean up parts of the river and adjacent lands that suffered crude contamination following by the spill.

To prevent future accidents, Hoidal’s agency said companies need to better evaluate risks from flooding rivers, soil subsidence and other changes to the landscape through which pipelines pass. To account for those changes, companies can take steps such as rerouting pipelines, drilling them more deeply or adding automatic valves so they can quickly be shut down.

There are 82 points at which oil and other hazardous liquid pipelines cross major rivers in Montana and portions of adjoining states. Inspections in the wake of the Yellowstone spill found exposed sections of pipe or other problems at eight of those major crossings and many smaller river and stream crossings.

Work on some of those crossings has since been completed or is underway by companies including ConocoPhillips, CHS and Exxon Mobil, Hoidal said Wednesday. That work is expected to continue

The pending investigation into Exxon’s Silvertip spill originally was expected to be completed within two months. It has dragged on in part due to the involvement of the federal Department of Justice and state agencies, which are still working out protocols to test the damaged section of pipeline to see what caused it to fail.

That analysis could be completed by the end of the month, said Montana Department of Environmental Quality Director Richard Opper, who chairs the safety review council.