By Josh Beckerman

Summit Midstream Partners LP said Thursday that it entered criminal and civil agreements to resolve investigations related to a North Dakota water spill, with $36.3 million of penalties to be paid over six years.

The U.S. Department of Justice said the settlement involves Summit Midstream Partners LLC and Meadowlark Midstream Co. LLC. As a result of transactions in 2016 and 2020, the two companies are now units of Summit Midstream Partners LP.

The DOJ said "Summit continued pumping produced water through the pipeline in 2014 to 2015 despite multiple warning signs that the line had ruptured."

According to the DOJ, a factual admission said "Summit's negligence included the design, construction and operation of the Marmon Water Gathering System pipeline, as well as the negligent failure to find and stop the spill after learning of objective signs of a leak."

In a press release, Summit said "as a company, we have accepted responsibility for the produced water spill at the Blacktail Creek site from the beginning and have been working diligently over the past seven years on efforts to fully remediate the environmental impacts to the area, while also investing heavily in preventative system improvements."

"Since discovering the spill in 2015, we have invested approximately $75 million on these overall system improvements and environmental remediation measures at the Blacktail Creek site," the company said.

Summit said "while we consider the overall monetary settlement penalties as severe under the circumstances, particularly given our substantial remediation and mitigation efforts to date, we believe that putting this matter behind us with manageable payment terms over the next six years is in the best interest of all of Summit's stakeholders and employees."

Summit units recently traded up 1% to $37.80.

Write to Josh Beckerman at josh.beckerman@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

08-06-21 1327ET