Oil spill at Texas refinery causes road closures as emergency crews work to contain spread

It is the second major leak to spill gallons of crude oil in the past week

Emergency crews are working to contain the damage from an oil spill at a refinery in Texas, where dramatic video footage shows a deluge of crude gushing out the side of a massive storage tank.

The spill on Wednesday morning led to road closures as investigators descended to the Texas City refinery of Marathon Petroleum on Wednesday morning.

Aerial footage from ABC 13 shows the area around the tanker in Galveston Bay saturated in the brownish-black crude oil while witness accounts posted to Facebook said the air surrounding the site “smelled horrible”.

The leak comes less than a week after a leak in an oil pipeline off the coast of California spilt up to 144,000 gallons of crude oil into the Pacific Ocean.

A pump seal failure at the storage facility lead to the leak, which was isolated to the refinery complex, Bruce Clawson, interim director of Homeland Security for Texas City, told ABC 13 News.

Authorities blocked non-essential traffic on the nearby Loop 197 as emergency crews worked to contain the spill, but there was no shelter in place order issued. No injuries have been reported.

Marathon Petroleum spokesman Jamal T Kheiry said in a statement an investigation would begin to determine the cause of the spill.

“The refinery has deployed air monitoring in the community as a precaution, and there is no indication of risk to the community," the statement said. "Cleanup is underway, and regulatory notifications have been made.”