CUSHING, Okla. – Emergency crews were busy Tuesday after a pipeline ruptured, causing an oil spill.
Vacuum trucks could be seen coming in and out of a road near Cushing to help clean up. Officials say the rupture was accidental.
“Just bad timing, soft ground. We had a lot of rain lately, so…found that a dozer that was working in the area had accidentally cut a 16-inch crude oil pipe that was underground,” said Wendi Marcy with Lincoln County Emergency Management.
Marcy says the incident happened around 4 p.m.
The oil company, Centurion, had the pipeline’s flow turned off after about an hour.
She couldn’t say how much oil has been spilled.
“It takes a little while for them to get everything shut down,” she said. “Basically, they just remove all the contaminated soil and haul it off to a hazardous materials site and go from there.”
For now, the only vehicles allowed on 750 Road between 3500 Road and 3510 Road are the vacuum and other clean up trucks containing the spilled oil.
Marcy says crews have a small nearby creek protected from any run-off and that there’s no danger to people in the area.
Emergency management says the road will be closed until the spill is cleaned up.