-Plains All American Pipeline revised downward its estimate of how much oil spilled in Santa Barbara County, Calif., after last week’s pipeline rupture. Via the Wall Street Journal, the company said as many as 101,000 gallons — 4,200 gallons lower than a prior estimate — were released. As of Monday, cleanup crews had skimmed 10,060 gallons of an oil-water mix from coastal waters and beaches. An estimated 21,000 gallons of oil spilled into the Pacific Ocean. Plains is still investigating the cause of the rupture.
-The torrential rains that hit Texas earlier this week had little effect on refinery and pipeline operations, Bloomberg reports. Kinder Morgan, however, shut down its Jefferson Street fuel terminal in Pasadena and Devon Energy stopped pumping from wells in storm-affected areas.
-Meanwhile, a wildfire in northern Alberta that has halted 10% of Canada’s oil production is spreading farther into oil sands areas. Via Bloomberg, Cenovus Energy on Tuesday said it evacuated workers from its Narrows Lake oil sands project and its Birch Mountain natural gas plant. In addition, MEG Energy suspended maintenance at its Christina Lake site and evacuated staff. Statoil said it would evacuate non-essential personnel from its Leismar site.
-The Department of Energy on Friday granted Pieridae Energy permission to export U.S. natural gas to Canada for the company’s Goldboro LNG project in Nova Scotia. Via Platts, Pieridae needs only two more approvals to fulfill its plan of exporting LNG for end use in Canada and to countries with which the U.S. has free trade agreements. The company hopes to start up the project in 2020.
-New York regulators today announced they will develop new spill response plans designed to minimize environmental damage from crude-by-rail incidents. Via the Associated Press, the Department of Environmental Conservation will deploy specialized spill response equipment along rail routes used to transport crude oil, in addition to developing geographic response plans. Response plans for 21 counties are set to be completed next April.
