A power outage caused excessive flaring at Sarnia's Plains Midstream plant early Tuesday afternoon.
The Ontario Environment Ministry says the Spills Action Centre was notified by the company at about 1pm that it was conducting a flare to burn off excess hydrocarbons as a result of a plant-wide outage.
Flames from the stack and thick black smoke could be seen billowing from the Plank Rd. plant, from a considerable distance, before gradually dissipating.
The ministry's Gary Wheeler says the flare is an approved safety measure that lasted about ten minutes and no impacts to local air quality were anticipated. He says the company was in the process of resuming plant operations.
Plains Midstream says the matter was investigated and resolved by their personnel, and there were no injuries or environmental impacts as a result of the incident. The facility's normal operations are reportedly resuming safely.
