About 700 barrels of dyed and chlorinated water spilled at an oil pipeline pump station in Minnesota on Wednesday during a test of the line’s integrity.
The spill occurred at Enbridge Energy’s Floodwood station at around 7 p.m. Workers had been flushing the water from the Red River through a segment of Enbridge’s Line 2B pipeline, which runs from Clearbrook, Minnesota to a terminal in northwestern Wisconsin.
Enbridge spokeswoman Lorraine Little said testing equipment failed — not the pipeline itself.
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“This piece of equipment was part of the maintenance or hydrostatic testing activity, so it’s not part of normal operating equipment,” she said.
Little said Enbridge crews contained the test water at the station and have already cleaned up the spill. She said no workers were injured and that the incident has been reported to the National Response Center.
She said the cause of the equipment failure is still under investigation.
Meanwhile, Little said the firm is continuing tests on the pipeline just south of Clearbrook, and that a similar test on a segment of the pipeline connecting to its Superior terminal occurred without incident.
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