ANCHORAGE, Alaska, June 1 (UPI) -- There were no injuries and no damage to the environment from a contained oil spill in Alaska, the operator of the Trans-Alaska pipeline said.
Alyeska Pipeline Service Co. said it closed the Trans-Alaska oil pipeline last week after oil spilled during a scheduled test at a pump station near Fairbanks.
The company said it lost power at a pump station near Fairbanks during the testing of a fire command system. As a result, relief valves opened and crude oil spilled into a secondary containment system.
Alyeska said it restarted the pipeline late Friday after nearly 80 hours of inactivity. The company added there no injuries or environmental damage from the accident of during start up operations.
The 800-mile pipeline from Prudhoe Bay to Valdez, Alaska, had a design capacity of 2 million barrels per day in the 1970s, though production from the region has declined since the late 1980s.
British oil giant BP is the largest shareholder of the pipeline.
Alyeska said it estimated there were 5,000 barrels of oil spilled because of the power failure.
Recovery efforts will return filtered oil back into the Trans-Alaska pipeline.
