No Planned Restart for Pipeline Shuttered After Montana Oil Spill

Bridger Pipeline LLC said on Tuesday it has no timeline for reopening a pipeline that breached over the weekend and spilled crude oil into the Yellowstone River near Glendive, Montana.

The company is confident the amount of oil spilled is around 1,200 barrels, company spokesman Bill Salvin said. The estimate is at the higher end of a range given earlier by the company.

The Environmental Protection Agency announced a coordinated response over the weekend that included the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the U.S. Department of Transportation's Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration.

Montana's Department of Environmental Quality and the state's Disaster and Emergency Services are part of the command, as are the City of Glendive and Dawson County.

Bridger did not know how long the response would take, Salvin said.

Results from the first water sample taken from the Glendive Municipal Water Treatment Plant showed an elevated level of volatile organic compounds, Dawson County said in a statement Tuesday.

Scientists at the Centers for Disease Control, who tested the sample, said they "do not see that domestic use of this water poses a short-term public health hazard," according to the statement.

The 42,000 barrel-per-day Poplar pipeline system gathers crude from producers in eastern Montana and North Dakota.

The leak in the line serving producers helped narrow Bakken crude's differential to the West Texas Intermediate benchmark price on Monday, which shrunk to $5.40 per barrel from Friday's settlement price of $5.80 under WTI, according to Shorcan Energy Brokers.

"This is a significant spill, and the coordination of various response activities at the spill site, the city of Glendive, and at downstream locations will be a priority over the next several days," said Richard Mylott of the EPA.

The spill is the second in the river in recent years. In 2011, Exxon Mobil Corp's 40,000-bpd Silvertip pipeline in Montana ruptured underneath the river, releasing more than 1,000 barrels of crude and costing the company about $135 million to clean up.

The Poplar pipeline has been an attractive conduit for Bakken crude since the shale boom began in 2010, and Bridger has often needed to ration the amount shippers could send due to the line's limited capacity, according to Federal Energy Regulatory Committee documents.

Reporting by Samantha Sunne; Additional reporting by Scott Haggett and Nia Williams in Calgary and Ashutosh Pandey in Bengaluru