ConocoPhillips Alaska Inc. on Tuesday continued its clean-up of a 111,300-gallon spill of produced water at its Kuparuk field on the North Slope after a leaking pipeline was discovered late Saturday. After Prudhoe Bay, Kuparuk is the second largest oil and gas field in Alaska.

According to ConocoPhillips, the produced water spill is a mixture of crude oil and liquid natural gas from the field’s producing wells, which was being transported through a six-inch diameter pipeline from a separating plant back to Kuparuk production pad 2H, where it was to be reinjected in the ground to maintain oil field pressure. The company said the produced water contained a trace of crude, with the actual oil spilled amounting to about one barrel of oil or about 50 gallons.

ConocoPhillips had not determined the cause of the leak late Monday. The pipeline, which has no history of incidents with the state, was internally inspected last October, and it had an external inspection in 2001. Investigators with the Alaska Department of Conservation (DEC) said spill clean-up could take up to three weeks.

Leslie Pearson, spill prevention and emergency response manager for the DEC, said the produced water is mostly seawater, which can kill tundra plant life. However, she noted that the ground is still frozen, which should protect the tundra’s root systems.

ConocoPhillips is majority owner of Kuparuk, and BP has a large minority interest. The other owners are Unocal Corp., ExxonMobil Corp. and ChevronTexaco.

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