WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency raised new concerns to the State Department about TransCanada Corp's proposed Keystone XL pipeline that would bring oil sands crude from Canada to the U.S. market.
In a letter on Monday to the State Department, the EPA said it was worried about the $7 billion pipeline's impact on groundwater from any spills and well as its effect on emission levels at U.S. Gulf Coast oil refineries.
The State Department, which hopes to decide whether to approve a permit for the pipeline before the end of the year, plans to hold public meetings on the project in Montana, South Dakota, Nebraska, Oklahoma and Texas as well as a meeting in Washington, D.C.
The new pipeline could move up to 700,000 barrels of oil a day.
The EPA said in its letter that two recent leaks in May along the company's existing Keystone pipeline underscored the need for the State Department to "carefully consider" both the route of the planned expansion of the pipeline and what measures are needed to prevent and detect spills.
"With respect to the spill detection systems proposed by (TransCanada), we remain concerned that relying solely on pressure drops and aerial surveys to detect leaks may result in smaller leaks going undetected for some time, resulting in potentially large spill volumes," the EPA said.
Requiring ground-level inspections of valves and other parts of the pipeline several times a year, in addition to plane patrols of the pipeline, could improve the ability to detect leaks or spill and limit any damage, the agency said. (Reporting by Tom Doggett, Ayesha Rascoe and Timothy Gardner; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)
