Crews investigate possible gasoline leak from Sunoco pipeline near Reading

Update, April 24: Investigators determined there was no pipeline leak, according to the Public Utility Commission. The agency is keeping in touch with the Department of Environmental Protection regarding soil testing at the site.

Reported originally:

Crews are investigating whether gasoline leaked from a Sunoco pipeline in Berks County, the state Public Utility Commission said in a news release.

The PUC said people reported a “strong gasoline odor” on Sunday near a home on Mountain Home Road in South Heidelberg Township, near Reading. The Bureau of Investigation and Enforcement’s Pipeline Safety Division, PUC’s independent investigation and enforcement bureau, as well as crews from Sunoco are trying to figure out whether a leak occurred.

The pipeline is a 14-inch steel line that was moving gasoline on Sunday, the PUC said. The line transports petroleum products from Sunoco’s Montello terminal near Reading to north-central Pennsylvania and New York state.

Sunoco workers dug test holes and a trench to try to find the source of the odor. “Testing of the monitoring wells and soil around the site is ongoing,” PUC spokesman Nils Hagen-Frederiksen said.

A spokesperson for Energy Transfer, Sunoco’s parent company, could not immediately be reached for comment.

The 14-inch line is not part of Sunoco’s Mariner East pipeline project. Those lines carry, or will carry, natural gas liquids.

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