Sunday · 18 October 2026 The DAILY Big Drop
One Leak, 130 Miles Under Scrutiny
An oil line that bleeds into a strip-mall parking lot is a reminder that the pipeline under your street can fail the same way — and federal regulators now think one company’s problems may run far beyond a single leak. The U.S. Department of Transportation’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) has slapped Energy Transfer with a sweeping corrective action order after crude surfaced in a Sterling Heights parking lot — an incident federal investigators say may signal a larger, system-wide safety problem — forcing the company to shut the damaged segment, cut pressure across a 130-mile stretch and complete inspections and repairs before resuming full service, according to Texas Energy Report. A separate federal complaint over a 277,000-gallon spill near Fort Worth says Energy Transfer and its liquid lines racked up 58 enforcement actions and $3,926,990 in fines from 2017 through 2024, casting the new leak as part of a pattern, not a fluke, in court filings. The mess lands on the communities the pipes run under.
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