WYOMING — On April 10, a pipeline on the Wind River Reservation started to spill an undetermined amount of crude oil into a tributary of the Wind River.
MI3 Petroleum Engineering, an oil and gas consulting and contract operating company, is the contractor operating the pipeline. The contractor is managed by the Hinono’eino (Northern Arapaho) and Newe (Eastern Shoshone) tribes as the Wind River Energy Commission, who were authorized by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to discharge from its Circle Ridge Field produced water treatment facility in 2021.
The Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality is continuing to monitor the situation.
According to the Liquid Energy Pipeline Association’s 2021 Pipeline Safety Excellence Performance Report and 2020-2022 Strategic Plan, pipeline incidents impacting people or the environment decreased 31 percent from 2017 to 2021, with total pipeline incidents dropping 17 percent. In 2021, 66 percent of crude oil incidents were 5 barrels or smaller and 85 percent of crude oil incidents were smaller than 50 barrels.
