CALGARY — Kinder Morgan has shut
down a pipeline that runs from Alberta to the West Coast while it
investigates a possible oil leak.

The Trans Mountain pipeline was
shut down on Friday afternoon as a precaution after a small amount of
crude was found on a farmer’s field about 150 kilometres west of
Edmonton, company spokeswoman Lexa Hobenshield said Monday.

“We are investigating whether the product is from a current release or historic incident,” she said in an emailed statement.

She added it’s not yet clear
exactly how much crude spilled, or when the 300,000-barrel-per-day
system may be up and running again.

The Trans Mountain line stretches
1,150 kilometres between Edmonton and terminals in the Vancouver area
and Washington State. It carries heavy and light crude oil, as well as
refined products such as gasoline and diesel.

Houston-based Kinder Morgan
(NYSE:KMI) owns or operates nearly 60,000 kilometres of pipelines and
180 terminals in North America.

Calgary-based Enbridge Inc.
(TSX:ENB) is planning to build another pipeline from the Edmonton area
to the West Coast, called Northern Gateway.

That controversial line would
wind up much further north on the coast than Trans Mountain, to connect
with the port of Kitimat, B.C. The crude would then make its way to
Asian markets by tanker.

Enbridge grappled with two
high-profile pipeline leaks in the U.S. Midwest last summer. Outages on
those lines caused major bottlenecks for Canadian crude that was bound
for U.S. markets.

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