As federal authorities and Exxon Mobil Corp. worked Tuesday to clean up an oil spill in Montana’s Yellowstone River, a U.S. lawmaker called for hearings to investigate the pipeline rupture that created the spill.

U.S. Rep. Ed Markey said pipeline owner and operator ExxonMobil should appear before Congress to answer questions about its operation of the Silvertip pipeline, which spilled as much as 1,000 barrels of oil near Billings, Mont., late Friday.

“ExxonMobil has turned parts of the Yellowstone River black with their spilled oil,” Markey, the top Democrat on the House of Representatives Natural Resources Committee, said in a statement. He added that lawmakers should examine “the holes in oil pipeline safety that led to this incident and how we might prevent another spill in the future.”

Markey noted that Exxon’s Montana oil pipeline met all regulatory requirements and that federal authorities had inspected the line in December. He proposed that U.S. pipeline-safety rules should be strengthened to require more frequent and more thorough pipeline inspections.

Federal regulators warned Exxon in 2006, 2007 and 2010 that it had violated federal pipeline-safety rules. In each case, Exxon corrected the violations and the cases were closed, according to documents issued by the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, or PHMSA, which oversees the safety of U.S. oil and gas pipelines.

In July 2010, the pipeline agency sent Exxon a warning letter with a list of seven probable violations that authorities spotted during an inspection in 2009. Among the violations were two valves that were leaking crude oil from the bonnets or stem packing.

ExxonMobil submitted documentation a few weeks after the inspection to indicate that the company replaced the valves and that the crude oil had been cleaned up. The company addressed all the other issues cited by the PHMSA and the agency said it was satisfied with the changes and closed the case, according to documents issued by the agency.

ExxonMobil spokeswoman Claire Hassett said the warning letter listed only “routine and minor” issues that were “not connected with the integrity of the pipeline at all.”

Hassett said that the PHMSA mischaracterized the valve-leaking violation.

“It was not a leakage it was seepage,” Hassett said. “The valve itself wasn’t the problem and the seepage was caused by the deterioration of the packing around the valve, which was replaced.”

Patricia Klinger, a PHMSA representative, confirmed the probable violations were addressed and the case is closed.

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