Line 3 oil spill

Line 3 oil spill
Line 3 oil spill
Location	Grand Rapids, Minnesota and ; Prairie River, ; Itasca County
Coordinates	47°13′08″N93°28′43″W / 47.21889°N 93.47861°W
Date	March 3, 1991
Cause
Cause	Ruptured pipeline
Operator	Lakehead Pipeline Company (now Enbridge)
Spill characteristics
Volume	1,700,000 US gal (6,400 m3)

Last updated January 28, 2025

The Line 3 oil spill was a 1.7 million gallon crude oil spill in Minnesota on March 3, 1991. The Line 3 pipeline, then owned by the Lakehead Pipeline Company (now Enbridge), ruptured on a wetland near Grand Rapids, Minnesota, spilling oil into the Prairie River, a tributary of the Mississippi River. It was the largest inland oil spill in the history of the United States.

Pipeline company operators based in Edmonton waited over an hour to shut down the line after noticing a drop in pressure. Another two hours passed before the pipeline's valves were shut off. As the river was still iced over at the time of the incident, contamination of downstream municipal water facilities was avoided. The Line 3 pipeline was also the origin of a 1.3 million gallon oil spill in Argyle in 1973, the second worst in Minnesota history.

Background

The Line 3 pipeline was built by the Lakehead Pipeline Company (now Enbridge) in the 1960s. The 34" wide, 1031-mile pipeline transports crude oil from Hardisty, Alberta ^[1] to Superior, Wisconsin. The pipeline was not tested for flaws in its entirety until after 1976.^[2]

From the 1970s until the 1991 spill, the Line 3 pipeline suffered 24 leaks due to the same seam failure^[2] and was the source of 16 "large oil spills" resulting in four million gallons of oil spilled.^[3] Officials with the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency estimated that a total of 5.7 million gallons had spilled from the Lakehead line since 1971.^[2] The Line 3 pipeline was also responsible for the second worst oil spill in Minnesota history, when 1.3 million gallons of crude spilled near Argyle, Minnesota in 1973.^[3] At the time of the 1991 spill, the pipeline carried 22 million gallons of oil every day.^[4]

Incident

On the morning of March 3, 1991, an underground section of the Line 3 pipeline ruptured on a 16-acre wetland owned by Harry Hutchins.^[4] Following the rupture, a geyser of pressurized oil sprayed 30 to 40 feet in the air, coating aspen trees in the area.^[5]^[4] Within hours oil spread throughout the wetland area^[5] and over 340,000 gallons of oil from the spill flowed via a storm drain into the Prairie River, a tributary of the Mississippi River.^[3] At the time, the river had sheets of ice that were 18 inches thick,^[5] and an eight inch pool of crude oil formed on top of the ice towards the middle of the river. Oil also made its way under the ice.^[5] The Mississippi River was just two miles downstream from the spill.^[6]

At 12:19 p.m., pipeline company operators in Edmonton, Alberta, noticed a massive drop in the line's pressure. Initially believing the pipeline's column of oil had become separated, they increased the pressure towards the end of the line.^[7]^[2] In a violation of company policy, they waited 71 minutes before shutting down the line after the drop in pressure.^[2] Two more hours passed before the company shut off valves to isolate the ruptured section of pipeline and prevent more oil from spilling.^[2] According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the delay in shutting down the pipeline resulted in a significant increase in the volume of oil that was spilled.^[5] Fish were killed where oil entered the water and the spill impacted marshes and vegetation on the riverbank.^[5]

In total, 1.7 million gallons of crude spilled from the pipeline. It remains the worst inland oil spill in the history of the United States.^[4]

Cleanup

A resident in the Grand Rapids area contacted the fire department after noticing an odor near the river.^[4] Around 300 people living within a half mile of the spill were evacuated for their safety.^[5]

Half a dozen government agencies responded to the disaster, including the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, the Minnesota Department of Emergency Management, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the United States Coast Guard.^[5] The pipeline company hired nearly 20 contractors from three states to attempt to clean up the spill. Oil was removed from the icy surface of the river using vacuum trucks. Squeegees were used to push oil across the ice to locations where it could be removed. Cleanup crews also used chainsaws to cut slots in the ice where booms could be used to absorb the oil. Contaminated blocks of ice were sprayed with hot water to wash out the oil.^[5]

While the pipeline company initially said that only 630,000 gallons of oil were spilled, they later tripled the estimate and reported that two million gallons of oil-contaminated water and oil had been collected from the site.^[3] 29,400 gallons of oil were thought to have leaked into the soil. Much of it was burned after being dug up.^[2]

Cleanup of the spill lasted for months.^[4] Pipeline representative Denise Hamsher said the company expected to spend $13 million on cleanup.^[2] As the Prairie River was still iced over, a larger disaster was averted. Had the oil spill occurred a month later when the ice had melted, hundreds of miles of the Mississippi River could have been affected.^[8]

Aftermath and related spills

Following the Line 3 oil spill, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers conducted a study of spill response management in the Mississippi River upstream of Minneapolis and Saint Paul. The study found that contamination of the river could create serious problems for the cities of St. Cloud and Minneapolis as they would be left without water if their river intakes were closed longer than a day.^[9] The study recommended the establishment of a defense network, including monitoring equipment to detect toxic spills and spill response teams for segments of the river.^[10]

Grand Rapids was the site of another Enbridge oil spill on February 19, 2004 when the company's Line 2 pipeline was found to have leaked at least 42,000 gallons of crude oil, affecting the area's groundwater.^[11]

In 2021, on the 30-year anniversary of the pipeline disaster, people gathered at the Prairie River for a march near the spill site.^[12] One protester was arrested and another 70 received citations.^[13]^[14] As of December 2020, Enbridge is constructing a new, larger pipeline to carry oil from Canada and replace a portion of Line 3.^[15]

Related Research Articles

A pipeline is a system of pipes for long-distance transportation of a liquid or gas, typically to a market area for consumption. The latest data from 2014 gives a total of slightly less than 2,175,000 miles (3,500,000 km) of pipeline in 120 countries around the world. The United States had 65%, Russia had 8%, and Canada had 3%, thus 76% of all pipeline were in these three countries. The main attribute to pollution from pipelines is caused by corrosion and leakage.

Enbridge Inc. is a multinational pipeline and energy company headquartered in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Enbridge owns and operates pipelines throughout Canada and the United States, transporting crude oil, natural gas, and natural gas liquids, and also generates renewable energy. Enbridge's pipeline system is the longest in North America and the largest oil export pipeline network in the world. Its crude oil system consists of 28,661 kilometres of pipelines. Its 38,300 kilometre natural gas pipeline system connects multiple Canadian provinces, several US states, and the Gulf of Mexico. The company was formed by Imperial Oil in 1949 as the Interprovincial Pipe Line Company Limited to transport Alberta oil to refineries. Over time, it has grown through acquisition of other existing pipeline companies and the expansion of their projects.

The Enbridge Pipeline System is an oil pipeline system which transports crude oil and dilbit from Canada to the United States. The system exceeds 5,000 kilometres (3,100 mi) in length including multiple paths. More than 3,000 kilometres (1,900 mi) of the system is in the United States while the rest is in Canada and serves the Athabasca oil sands production facilities. Main parts of the system are 2,306-kilometre-long (1,433 mi) Canadian Mainline and 3,057-kilometre-long (1,900 mi) Lakehead System. On average, it delivers 1.4 million barrels per day of crude oil and other products to the major oil refineries in the American Midwest and the Canadian province of Ontario. The Canadian portion is owned by Enbridge, while the U.S. portion is partly owned by that company through Enbridge Energy Partners, LP, formerly known as Lakehead Pipe Line Partners and Lakehead Pipe Line Company.

The Colonial Pipeline is the largest pipeline system for refined oil products in the U.S. The pipeline – consisting of three tubes – is 5,500 miles (8,850 km) long and can carry 3 million barrels of fuel per day between Texas and New York.

Plains All American Pipeline, L.P. is a master limited partnership engaged in pipeline transport, marketing, and storage of liquefied petroleum gas and petroleum in the United States and Canada. Plains owns interests in 18,370 miles (29,560 km) of pipelines, storage capacity for about 75 million barrels of crude oil, 28 million barrels of NGLs, 68 billion cubic feet of natural gas, and 5 natural gas processing plants. The company is headquartered in the Allen Center in Downtown Houston, Texas. Plains is a publicly traded Master limited partnership. PAA owns an extensive network of pipeline transportation, terminalling, storage and gathering assets in key crude oil and NGL producing basins and transportation corridors at major market hubs in the United States and Canada.

The Prairie River is a river in Itasca County, Minnesota. The river is located in northern Minnesota, near the communities of Taconite, Bovey, Grand Rapids, and La Prairie. It is a tributary of the Mississippi River.

The Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipelines were a planned-but-never-built project for a twin pipeline from Bruderheim, Alberta, to Kitimat, British Columbia. The project was active from the mid-2000s to 2016. The eastbound pipeline would have imported natural gas condensate, and the westbound pipeline would have exported diluted bitumen from the Athabasca oil sands to a marine terminal in Kitimat for transportation to Asian markets via oil tankers. The project would have also included terminal facilities with "integrated marine infrastructure at tidewater to accommodate loading and unloading of oil and condensate tankers, and marine transportation of oil and condensate." The CA$7.9 billion project was first proposed in the mid-2000s but was postponed several times. The project plan was developed by Enbridge Inc., a Canadian crude oil and liquids pipeline and storage company.

The Kalamazoo River oil spill occurred in July 2010 when a pipeline operated by Enbridge burst and flowed into Talmadge Creek, a tributary of the Kalamazoo River near Marshall, Michigan. A 6-foot (1.8 m) break in the pipeline resulted in one of the largest inland oil spills in U.S. history. The pipeline carries diluted bitumen (dilbit), a heavy crude oil from Canada's Athabasca oil sands to the United States. Cleanup took five years. Following the spill, the volatile hydrocarbon diluents evaporated, leaving the heavier bitumen to sink in the water column. Thirty-five miles (56 km) of the Kalamazoo River were closed for clean-up until June 2012, when portions of the river were re-opened. On March 14, 2013, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) ordered Enbridge to return to dredge portions of the river to remove submerged oil and oil-contaminated sediment.

Enbridge Line 5 is a 645-mile oil pipeline owned by the Canadian multinational corporation Enbridge. Constructed in 1953, the pipeline conveys crude oil from western Canada to eastern Canada via the Great Lakes states. Line 5 is part of the Enbridge Lakehead System and passes under the environmentally sensitive Straits of Mackinac, which connect Lake Michigan to Lake Huron. The 30-inch pipeline carries 540,000 barrels (86,000 m³) of synthetic crude, natural gas liquids, sweet crude, and light sour crude per day as of 2013.

The Refugio oil spill on May 19, 2015, contaminated one of the most biologically diverse areas of the West Coast of the United States with 142,800 U.S. gallons of crude oil. The corroded pipeline that caused the spill closed indefinitely, resulting in financial impacts to the county estimated as high as $74 million as it and a related pipeline remained out of service for three years. The cost of the cleanup was estimated by the company to be $96 million with overall expenses including expected legal claims and potential settlements to be around $257 million.

The Sandpiper pipeline was a proposed 616-mile-long (991 km) underground oil pipeline project in the United States. It would have carried light crude oil from the Bakken oil fields in Northwest North Dakota, through Minnesota, to Superior, Wisconsin.

The Line 3 pipeline is an oil pipeline owned by the Canadian multinational Enbridge. Operating since 1968, it runs 1,031 miles (1,659 km) from Hardisty, Alberta, Canada to Superior, Wisconsin, United States.

The Stop Line 3 protests are an ongoing series of demonstrations in the U.S. state of Minnesota against the expansion of Enbridge's Line 3 oil pipeline along a new route. The new route was completed in September 2021, and was operational on 1 October 2021. Indigenous people have led the resistance to the construction of the pipeline, which began following the project's approval in November 2020. Opponents of the pipeline expansion, called water protectors, have established ceremonial lodges and resistance camps along the route of the pipeline. Enbridge has funded an escrow account that law enforcement agencies may draw on for pipeline-related police work. Organizers have arranged marches and occupations of Enbridge construction sites. Following the blockade of an Enbridge pump station on June 7, 2021, nearly 250 people were arrested. Invoking treaty rights, organizers established an encampment at the headwaters of the Mississippi River at a site where Enbridge intends to bury the pipeline.

References

↑ Kelley, Alexandra (June 8, 2021). "Pipeline foes double down on efforts to halt Line 3 construction". The Hill.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Laszewski, Charles (November 12, 1992). "Record '91 Pipeline Leak One of Many on 325-mile Route". St. Paul Pioneer Press .
1 2 3 4 "Company Revises Minnesota Oil Spill Upward to 1.7 Million Gallons". AP News. March 13, 1991. Archived from the original on March 3, 2021.
1 2 3 4 5 6 Siple, Julie; Wareham, Bill; Kraker, Dan; Nelson, Cody (June 20, 2018). "Rivers of Oil, Episode 2: The largest inland spill". MPR News . Archived from the original on March 4, 2021.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 "Incident News: Lakehead Pipeline Company". National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Archived from the original on December 10, 2016. Retrieved May 24, 2021.
↑ Kraker, Dan; Marohn, Kirsti (March 4, 2021). "30 years later, echoes of largest inland oil spill remain in Line 3 fight". Duluth News Tribune . Archived from the original on March 4, 2021.
↑ Laszewski, Charles (December 20, 1992). "Petroleum Spills Taint Minnesota Landscape: Leaks Displace Families, Destroy Property Values". St. Paul Pioneer Press.
↑ Inskip, Leonard (December 6, 1993). "All pulling together to defend against river spills". Star Tribune.
↑ United States Army Corps of Engineers (1993). Water Supply and Spill Response Management for the Mississippi River Upstream of the Twin Cities. Minnesota Environmental Quality Board. pp. 1–5.
↑ Rebuffoni, Dean (June 4, 1993). "River study urges defense against spills - System would protect Twin Cities' water supply". Star Tribune.
↑ "Summary Incident Report, Enbridge Energy Partners L .P . (Op ID 11169), Deer River, MN to Floodwood, MN (Unit 3083), Line 2 Crude Oil Leak, February 19, 2004" (PDF). Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration. September 30, 2010. Archived (PDF) from the original on August 26, 2023. Retrieved June 2, 2021.
↑ Quinn, Emma (March 4, 2021). "Line 3 opponents commemorate 30th anniversary of Grand Rapids oil spill". KBJR.
↑ Pember, Mary Annette (March 3, 2021). "Clash at historic Minnesota pipeline spill leads to charges". Indian Country Today. Archived from the original on August 26, 2023. Retrieved June 2, 2021.
↑ Donovan, Larissa (March 4, 2021). "Over 70 protesters cited at 30th Anniversary of Line 3 spill near Grand Rapids". Bemidji Now. Archived from the original on August 26, 2023. Retrieved June 2, 2021.
↑ Orenstein, Walker (December 1, 2020). "What's next for the Enbridge Line 3 project in Minnesota? Construction. And protests". MinnPost. Archived from the original on June 2, 2021. Retrieved June 2, 2021.