Oil pipeline ruptured near port of Vancouver

VANCOUVER, British Columbia, July 25 (Reuters) A pipeline in a Vancouver suburb was ruptured sending a geyser of oil shooting 12 metres into the air, coating neighborhood streets and spilling crude into an ocean inlet, witnesses and officials said.

The accident along Burrard Inlet in suburban Burnaby was apparently caused when road construction equipment struck the pipeline, which connects to an oil terminal in the port of Vancouver. It forced officials to evacuate up to 100 nearby houses.

Pipeline owner Kinder Morgan Energy Partners LP said it was not known how much oil leaked from the line that links the company's Westridge Marine Terminal with the rest of its Trans Mountain pipeline system.

A company spokesman said the ruptured section of the line was shut down immediately after the leak was discovered. Witnesses told local media the oil spewed into the air for more than 20 minutes.

There were no reports of injuries, but an unknown amount of oil flowed downhill through a residential area to the water.

Crews were checking to see if it also got into the sewers or storm overflow pipes that go to the ocean shore.

An oily sheen could be seen on the water and containment booms and cleanup equipment were sent to the scene. Wind conditions were blowing the oil back to shore, a spokeswoman for the port of Vancouver said.

''Right now we're in recovery mode,'' Anne McMullin said.

Aerial television pictures showed a highway covered in crude oil at the break site. A Reuters photographer in the area said construction equipment and trees as far as 200 metres (yards) from the area of the rupture were coated in black.

Chevron Corp. , which operates a 52,000 barrel a day refinery in the area, said the spill did not involve its operation.

The accident also caused problems with the afternoon commute, closing a major road connecting Vancouver and its eastern suburbs and forcing slowdowns on a commuter rail line.

Burnaby Mayor Derek Corrigan said up to 100 families might have to be evacuated for more than a day while the scene was being cleaned up.

''I'm just happy that nobody was hurt, and we'll just deal with the rest,'' Corrigan told an interviewer.

REUTERS DKS PM0531