Crude oil leak at Burnaby Mountain tank contained: Kinder Morgan

Some Burnaby residents awoke to the strong smell of oil fumes after about 200,000 litres of crude oil spilled from a storage tank on Burnaby Mountain on Wednesday night.

The leak at the Kinder Morgan tank farm just east of Vancouver was spotted at about 10 p.m. by a contractor, the company said. The oil was captured in a lined containment bay surrounding the tank, and there were no leaks into the surrounding environment, the company said.

Hazardous-materials crews and firefighters sprayed the leaked oil with foam to keep down the smell on Thursday morning, while the company determined what to do with the leaked oil. The company was also monitoring the air quality at the site, but said the odorous fumes were not a safety issue.

Kinder Morgan also involved in spill in 2007

There are 13 tanks at the storage facility located near the intersection of Gaglardi Way and Burnaby Mountain Parkway, and this is not the first time that Kinder Morgan has had to deal with leaking oil linked to the Burnaby facility.

In July 2007, a construction crew digging with an excavator on Inlet Drive near the intersection of Barnet Highway and Hastings Street ruptured a Kinder Morgan pipeline carrying crude from the tank farm to a tanker facility on Burrard Inlet on the north side of Burnaby Mountain.

About 234,000 litres of oil shot 30 metres into the air for about 25 minutes, covering some nearby homes, and oozing into Burrard Inlet. The Transportation Safety Board eventually concluded the line was improperly marked on outdated drawings used by the contractor and blamed the spill on inadequate communication between Kinder Morgan and the contractor.