Summit Midstream Resolves Investigations of North Dakota Water Spill
August 06 2021 - 1:27PM
Dow Jones News
By Josh Beckerman
Summit Midstream Partners LP said Thursday that it entered
criminal and civil agreements to resolve investigations related to
a North Dakota water spill, with $36.3 million of penalties to be
paid over six years.
The U.S. Department of Justice said the settlement involves
Summit Midstream Partners LLC and Meadowlark Midstream Co. LLC. As
a result of transactions in 2016 and 2020, the two companies are
now units of Summit Midstream Partners LP.
The DOJ said "Summit continued pumping produced water through
the pipeline in 2014 to 2015 despite multiple warning signs that
the line had ruptured."
According to the DOJ, a factual admission said "Summit's
negligence included the design, construction and operation of the
Marmon Water Gathering System pipeline, as well as the negligent
failure to find and stop the spill after learning of objective
signs of a leak."
In a press release, Summit said "as a company, we have accepted
responsibility for the produced water spill at the Blacktail Creek
site from the beginning and have been working diligently over the
past seven years on efforts to fully remediate the environmental
impacts to the area, while also investing heavily in preventative
system improvements."
"Since discovering the spill in 2015, we have invested
approximately $75 million on these overall system improvements and
environmental remediation measures at the Blacktail Creek site,"
the company said.
Summit said "while we consider the overall monetary settlement
penalties as severe under the circumstances, particularly given our
substantial remediation and mitigation efforts to date, we believe
that putting this matter behind us with manageable payment terms
over the next six years is in the best interest of all of Summit's
stakeholders and employees."
Summit units recently traded up 1% to $37.80.
Write to Josh Beckerman at josh.beckerman@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
August 06, 2021 13:27 ET (17:27 GMT)
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