A broken Chevron Corporation pipeline has spilled around 4,800 gallons of oil that has flowed into an intermittent stream on public land in northwest Colorado, US. The leak came from a failed 6-inch pipeline, with crude oil traveling approximately 2 miles downstream along a tributary of Stinking Water Creek, according to state officials.
The crude was stopped from continuing further downstream by a small dam that had been installed as a preventative measure to contain spills. The cause of the pipeline failure is under investigation by Chevron, and clean-up work is on-going.
In Colorado state law the threshold for reporting spills was lowered in 2013. Starting in 2014, it required all spills of more than a barrel outside a secondary containment area to be reported within 24 hours.