DAWSON CREEK, B.C. - Police say a natural gas pipeline in northeast British Columbia that was bombed over the weekend did not rupture.

RCMP spokesman Sgt. Tim Shields said Tuesday the bomb was set beside a line that transports poisonous or sour gas and is owned by EnCana (TSX:ECA), about 50 kilometres east of Dawson Creek, near the B.C.-Alberta border.

''We are not characterizing it as an act of terrorism,'' Shields said. ''It's an isolated criminal act.''

Shields said a moose hunter stumbled across a small bomb crater beside or underneath the line.

''The crater is about six feet across and four feet deep,'' he said. ''This hunter had been to that same location the previous day, so he knew that it had just occurred overnight.''

The bomb appears to have been deliberately set at a point where the 30-centimetre-wide pipeline emerges from the ground and it went off during the night of Oct. 11.