Texas City officials are investigating what caused a leak of crude oil at a Marathon Petroleum refinery on Wednesday morning.
A video shows a tank on the company’s Galveston Bay refinery leaking crude oil from a pipe on the side of the tank. According to a Marathon Petroleum spokesperson, the spill was contained within the refinery.
#BREAKING : Tanker at Marathon Refinery in Texas City is leaking oil. @DevenClarke is headed to the scene to provide live updates at 11 a.m. @KPRC2 #hounews pic.twitter.com/3zGgA4puTJ
— Kristina (@kristina_coble) October 6, 2021
Jamal T. Kheiry, the spokesperson, said the company has deployed air monitoring equipment but “there is no indication of risk to the community”.
He continued: “Cleanup is under way, and regulatory notifications have been made.”
Loop 197 from 4th Avenue South to FM 519 is closed to non-essential traffic due to the response to the spill.
The Marathon Galveston Bay Refinery has a refining capacity of 593,000 barrels of oil per day.
Earlier this year, Reuters reported that Marathon Petroleum Corporation cut its production by about a third following a key compressor outage. It is, however, the largest US refiner by capacity and the Galveston Bay Refinery is the second-largest in the US.
At the time of reporting, no injuries have been reported and the cause of the spill is being investigated.
