SHERIDAN, Wyo. (AP) - A significant oil spill in the Powder River Basin has been substantially cleaned up after a burning operation, but more work remains to be done, federal officials said.
An estimated 25,000 gallons of oil spilled when a 6-inch pipeline sprang a leak May 19 about 45 miles southeast of Buffalo and 35 miles southeast of Gillette. U.S. Bureau of Land Management officials say the oil flowed more than two miles, but they put in a dam to hold the spill a couple miles short of the Powder River.
Clark Bennett with the U.S. Bureau of Land Management in Buffalo said Tuesday that the burn happened Thursday and Friday. The bureau didn’t notify the public about the spill because nobody was being affected, he told The Sheridan Press (https://bit.ly/1mrkUBt).
The pipeline’s owner, Casper-based Belle Fourche Pipeline, burned off the oil because other cleanup options weren’t practical. Company officials burned off the oil in segments, Duane Spencer, the bureau’s Buffalo Field Office manager, told The Associated Press on Wednesday.
Bureau officials plan to meet again Friday with Belle Fourche Pipeline to discuss further cleanup. “We’ve asked them to prepare next steps for remediation,” Spencer said.
How the spill happened remains unknown. The pipeline was buried, and apparently nobody was working in the area when the spill occurred, Spencer said.
The oil flowed in a narrow, ephemeral drainage, he said, and it was stopped just short of reaching private property. Part of the oil crossed state land, and the bureau has been talking with the Office of State Lands and Investments about the cleanup, Spencer said.
Spilled crude oil tends to stay on the surface of the ground, and the oil doesn’t present a threat to groundwater, bureau officials said.
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Information from: The Sheridan (Wyo.) Press, https://www.thesheridanpress.com/
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