Jet fuel spill shuts down Northwest's main oil pipeline

Spill-response crews planned to start digging up a blueberry farm near Everett on Tuesday to find the cause of a jet-fuel spill that shut down the Pacific Northwest’s primary oil pipeline.

The farm sits on the route of the Olympic Pipeline, a mostly underground, 400-mile system of pipes owned by BP. It carries gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel from four refineries on the shores of Puget Sound to Seattle, Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, Renton, Tacoma, Vancouver, and Portland.

A sheen of jet fuel was reported in a drainage ditch on the farm on Nov. 11, according to BP spokesperson Cesar Rodriguez.

Where the jet fuel spilled, the Olympic Pipeline is actually two parallel pipes, one 16 inches wide and the other 20 inches wide.

The larger underground pipe somehow sprang a leak, with the cause currently under investigation.

Responders have deployed oil-spill containment boom and a vacuum truck to capture spilled fuel. They have also installed a barrier to stop fuel from flowing from the drainage ditch into the Snohomish River.

The paired steel pipes were shut down until Nov. 16, when the smaller pipe resumed carrying fuels to customers in Washington and Oregon, including jet fuel to Sea-Tac Airport.

The larger pipe remains shut down.

Airport officials say BP notified them of the shutdown on Nov. 14. Flights were not affected, nor were any emergency measures necessary, such as trucking in extra fuel or having airplanes carry extra fuel to avoid refueling at Sea-Tac, according to airport spokesperson Perry Cooper.

“We never got to that point,” Cooper said in an email. “We had plenty of fuel on hand to cover the load, typically 3-5 days of supply.”

ABC News reported that airlines were warned they might have to “ferry” extra fuel on inbound flights so they could depart from Sea-Tac without refueling there.

An unnamed Alaska Airlines spokesperson did not directly respond to KUOW’s inquiry about those warnings, saying only that the airline’s operations were not disrupted.

Nearly a week after the spill, neither BP nor any regulators would provide any estimates of how much jet fuel spilled.

According to coordinates provided by the Washington Department of Ecology, the fuel spilled about 2,000 feet from where the pipeline crosses the Snohomish River.

“The spill is not near or threatening any bodies of water,” Ecology spokesperson Jasmin Adams said by email.

Washington Utilities and Transportation Commission spokesperson Amy Reynolds declined to say when that pipeline segment had last been inspected, citing the ongoing investigation.

In 2023, the Olympic Pipeline spilled 21,000 gallons of gasoline on a farm in Skagit County, necessitating the removal of 4,300 cubic yards — more than 300 dump-truck loads — of contaminated soil and emergency efforts to keep gas from spreading from a salmon-bearing drainage ditch into the Skagit River.

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Spokesperson Jasmin Adams said Ecology expects to issue a penalty to BP for that 2023 spill by the end of the week.

Ecology levied a $100,000 fine against BP in 2022 for spilling 67 gallons of gasoline from the Olympic Pipeline near Woodinville in 2020.

Though jet fuel, gasoline, and their vapors are toxic, their spills are generally considered less disastrous than spills of crude oil or heavier petroleum products, which can be much more difficult, if not impossible, to remove from the environment.