Partial oil deliveries through Illinois on the Keystone Pipeline resumed late Wednesday after a nearly week-long outage as TC Energy Corp. revived the network’s Canadian exports and continued cleanup work.

TC Energy

A brief TC progress report said that after parts of the southbound leg to the Texas coast were shut Dec. 7 following the discovery of a leak, the line re-opened from Alberta to the Illinois refining region area of Wood River and Patoka. Shippers and regulators were briefed on the traffic revival, added the Calgary firm.

No date was given for resuming operations by the Keystone southern leg, which runs from a Nebraska junction near the oil leak in northern Kansas to the Cushing storage and trading hub in Oklahoma, then to the Houston region.

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“The affected segment of the Keystone Pipeline System remains safely isolated as investigation, recovery, repair and remediation continues to advance,” representatives for TC wrote in a statement. “This segment will not be restarted until it is safe to do so and when we have regulatory approval from the [Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration].”

Rainstorms in the region briefly threatened to delay the restart of the northern half of the 600,000 b/d pipeline.

About 300 pipeline employees and environmental contractors are working on the cleanup of an estimated 14,000 bbl spill, the largest in Keystone’s 12-year history.

The work ranged from heavy-duty earth and oil containment equipment hauling to a beaver rescue early this week, according to TC.

“Vacuum trucks and our crews continue to operate around the clock,” added the Calgary firm. “Multiple booms are set up downstream of the release point to contain the oil from moving downstream; oil has not breached the containment area.”