ITS DILBIT
Company reopens most of pipeline following Kansas oil spill
Oil from a Keystone pipeline rupture flows into Mill Creek in Washington County, Kansas, on Thursday, Dec 8, 2022. Vacuum trucks, booms and an emergency dam were constructed on the creek to intercept the spill. (Kyle Bauer/KCLY/KFRM Radio via AP)More
JOHN HANNA
Thu, December 15, 2022
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — The operator of a pipeline with the largest onshore crude oil spill in nine years has reopened all of it except for the stretch in Kansas and northern Oklahoma that includes the site of the rupture.
Canada-based T.C. Energy said in a statement Wednesday night that its Keystone system has restarted operations from Canada to southern Nebraska and from there to south-central Illinois. It also is operating the pipeline from northern Oklahoma to the Gulf Coast.
The Dec. 7 spill forced the company to shut down the Keystone system and dumped about 14,000 barrels of heavy crude oil into a northeastern Kansas creek running through rural pastureland in Washington County, about 150 miles (240 kilometers) northwest of Kansas City. Each barrel is 42 gallons, the size of a household bathtub.
“The affected segment of the Keystone Pipeline System remains safely isolated as investigation, recovery, repair and remediation continues to advance,” the company said in a statement. “This segment will not be restarted until it is safe to do so.”
Last week’s spill was the largest on the 2,700-mile (4,345-kilometer) Keystone system since it began operating in 2010 and the largest onshore spill since a Tesoro Corp. pipeline rupture in North Dakota leaked 20,600 barrels in September 2013, according to U.S. Department of Transportation data.
The crude carried by the pipeline is extracted from tar sands in western Canada, can sink in water and can be harder to clean up than more conventional crude oil, according to experts and environmentalists. A 2016 National Academies of Sciences study said the tar sands oil has an “exceptionally high density” compared with other crude oils that can “pose particular challenges when they reach water bodies.”
Company and officials have said no drinking water supplies were affected, the oil didn't reach larger waterways and no one was evacuated. But the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said Friday that four dead animals and 71 dead fish had been recovered.
The EPA also said the company has recovered 5,567 barrels of oil and water and 5,000 cubic yards of oil-contaminated soil, or enough to fill about 24,000 bathtubs.
Concerns that spills could pollute waterways spurred opposition to plans by TC Energy to build another crude oil pipeline in the same system, the 1,200-mile (1,900-kilometer) Keystone XL, across Montana, South Dakota and Nebraska. President Joe Biden’s cancelation of a permit for the project led the company to pull the plug last year.
___
Follow John Hanna on Twitter: https://twitter.com/apjdhanna
Oil from a Keystone pipeline rupture flows into Mill Creek in Washington County, Kansas, on Thursday, Dec 8, 2022. Vacuum trucks, booms and an emergency dam were constructed on the creek to intercept the spill. (Kyle Bauer/KCLY/KFRM Radio via AP)More
JOHN HANNA
Thu, December 15, 2022
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — The operator of a pipeline with the largest onshore crude oil spill in nine years has reopened all of it except for the stretch in Kansas and northern Oklahoma that includes the site of the rupture.
Canada-based T.C. Energy said in a statement Wednesday night that its Keystone system has restarted operations from Canada to southern Nebraska and from there to south-central Illinois. It also is operating the pipeline from northern Oklahoma to the Gulf Coast.
The Dec. 7 spill forced the company to shut down the Keystone system and dumped about 14,000 barrels of heavy crude oil into a northeastern Kansas creek running through rural pastureland in Washington County, about 150 miles (240 kilometers) northwest of Kansas City. Each barrel is 42 gallons, the size of a household bathtub.
“The affected segment of the Keystone Pipeline System remains safely isolated as investigation, recovery, repair and remediation continues to advance,” the company said in a statement. “This segment will not be restarted until it is safe to do so.”
Last week’s spill was the largest on the 2,700-mile (4,345-kilometer) Keystone system since it began operating in 2010 and the largest onshore spill since a Tesoro Corp. pipeline rupture in North Dakota leaked 20,600 barrels in September 2013, according to U.S. Department of Transportation data.
The crude carried by the pipeline is extracted from tar sands in western Canada, can sink in water and can be harder to clean up than more conventional crude oil, according to experts and environmentalists. A 2016 National Academies of Sciences study said the tar sands oil has an “exceptionally high density” compared with other crude oils that can “pose particular challenges when they reach water bodies.”
Company and officials have said no drinking water supplies were affected, the oil didn't reach larger waterways and no one was evacuated. But the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said Friday that four dead animals and 71 dead fish had been recovered.
The EPA also said the company has recovered 5,567 barrels of oil and water and 5,000 cubic yards of oil-contaminated soil, or enough to fill about 24,000 bathtubs.
Concerns that spills could pollute waterways spurred opposition to plans by TC Energy to build another crude oil pipeline in the same system, the 1,200-mile (1,900-kilometer) Keystone XL, across Montana, South Dakota and Nebraska. President Joe Biden’s cancelation of a permit for the project led the company to pull the plug last year.
___
Follow John Hanna on Twitter: https://twitter.com/apjdhanna
Keystone pipeline break spilled diluted bitumen, complicating cleanup
Investigators, cleanup crews begin scouring oil pipeline spill in Kansas
Thu, December 15, 2022
By Rod Nickel and Mrinalika Roy
(Reuters) -The oil spilled from TC Energy Corp's ruptured Keystone pipeline was diluted bitumen, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said on Thursday, adding complications to the cleanup.
The 622,000 barrels per day (bpd) pipeline was shut last week after it spilled 14,000 barrels of oil in rural Kansas, including into a creek. Bitumen tends to sink in water, making it harder to collect than oils that float.
The parts of the pipeline carrying oil from Alberta, Canada, to refineries in Illinois opened on Wednesday at reduced capacity. The ruptured portion that extends from south of Steele City, Nebraska, to a storage hub in Cushing, Oklahoma, remains closed.
Bitumen from Canada's oil sands is a dense, thick form of oil that shippers dilute with lighter oils so it can move through pipelines. The resulting product is called dilbit for short.
A 2016 National Academy of Sciences study for the U.S. Department of Transportation examined whether transporting dilbit carries different environmental risks than other oils, following a 2010 spill in Michigan.
The report said that when diluted bitumen spills, a thick, dense material forms as a residue after exposure to the environment. The residue tends to stick to surfaces, sometimes sinking to the bottom of a water body.
“For this reason, spills of diluted bitumen pose particular challenges when they reach water bodies,” the report said.
Crews are using equipment to skim oily water off the surface of Mill Creek in Kansas and to vacuum crude into trucks. Colder temperatures may hamper the cleanup, the EPA said.
Cleanup of the 2010 Enbridge Inc pipeline spill lasted years because of the difficulties collecting dilbit, said Keith Brooks, campaigns director at Environmental Defence, adding that recovery in Kansas may be no different.
"I would expect it's going to be a long, long time.
The Sierra Club, another environmental advocacy group, questioned why parts of the pipeline reopened before TC Energy had identified the leak's cause.
"How can we be assured that other segments of the pipeline aren't equally prone to failure?" said Zack Pistoria, Sierra's lobbyist in Kansas.
More than 400 people are involved in the cleanup including personnel from EPA, U.S. Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, state and local agencies, TC Energy and TC Energy contractors, the agency said.
The response team has so far recovered 5,567 barrels of oil-water mixture from Mill Creek.
The EPA said four dead mammals have been recovered, and 71 fish.
TC said in a statement that it has excavated around the ruptured pipeline segment, calling it a milestone in the repair and investigation process.
Enbridge meanwhile increased its rationing of space on its oil Mainline for January, in a sign that demand to ship Canadian barrels south is outpacing pipeline capacity after the Keystone outage.
(Reporting by Mrinalika Roy in Bengaluru and Rod Nickel in Winnipeg; additional reporting by Nia Williams, Deep K Vakil in Bengaluru; Editing by Krishna Chandra, Bill Berkrot and Grant McCool)
Investigators, cleanup crews begin scouring oil pipeline spill in Kansas
Thu, December 15, 2022
By Rod Nickel and Mrinalika Roy
(Reuters) -The oil spilled from TC Energy Corp's ruptured Keystone pipeline was diluted bitumen, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said on Thursday, adding complications to the cleanup.
The 622,000 barrels per day (bpd) pipeline was shut last week after it spilled 14,000 barrels of oil in rural Kansas, including into a creek. Bitumen tends to sink in water, making it harder to collect than oils that float.
The parts of the pipeline carrying oil from Alberta, Canada, to refineries in Illinois opened on Wednesday at reduced capacity. The ruptured portion that extends from south of Steele City, Nebraska, to a storage hub in Cushing, Oklahoma, remains closed.
Bitumen from Canada's oil sands is a dense, thick form of oil that shippers dilute with lighter oils so it can move through pipelines. The resulting product is called dilbit for short.
A 2016 National Academy of Sciences study for the U.S. Department of Transportation examined whether transporting dilbit carries different environmental risks than other oils, following a 2010 spill in Michigan.
The report said that when diluted bitumen spills, a thick, dense material forms as a residue after exposure to the environment. The residue tends to stick to surfaces, sometimes sinking to the bottom of a water body.
“For this reason, spills of diluted bitumen pose particular challenges when they reach water bodies,” the report said.
Crews are using equipment to skim oily water off the surface of Mill Creek in Kansas and to vacuum crude into trucks. Colder temperatures may hamper the cleanup, the EPA said.
Cleanup of the 2010 Enbridge Inc pipeline spill lasted years because of the difficulties collecting dilbit, said Keith Brooks, campaigns director at Environmental Defence, adding that recovery in Kansas may be no different.
"I would expect it's going to be a long, long time.
The Sierra Club, another environmental advocacy group, questioned why parts of the pipeline reopened before TC Energy had identified the leak's cause.
"How can we be assured that other segments of the pipeline aren't equally prone to failure?" said Zack Pistoria, Sierra's lobbyist in Kansas.
More than 400 people are involved in the cleanup including personnel from EPA, U.S. Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, state and local agencies, TC Energy and TC Energy contractors, the agency said.
The response team has so far recovered 5,567 barrels of oil-water mixture from Mill Creek.
The EPA said four dead mammals have been recovered, and 71 fish.
TC said in a statement that it has excavated around the ruptured pipeline segment, calling it a milestone in the repair and investigation process.
Enbridge meanwhile increased its rationing of space on its oil Mainline for January, in a sign that demand to ship Canadian barrels south is outpacing pipeline capacity after the Keystone outage.
(Reporting by Mrinalika Roy in Bengaluru and Rod Nickel in Winnipeg; additional reporting by Nia Williams, Deep K Vakil in Bengaluru; Editing by Krishna Chandra, Bill Berkrot and Grant McCool)
Celia Llopis-Jepsen
Thu, December 15, 2022
In this photo taken by a drone, cleanup continues in the area where the ruptured Keystone pipeline dumped oil into a creek in Washington County, Kan.,
Friday, Dec. 9, 2022.
The spill in Kansas is now the second-largest spill of tar sands crude on U.S. soil. And scientists say this stuff comes with major complications for containing and cleaning it.
Each day that passes, the hundreds of thousands of gallons of sludgy oil coating Mill Creek in north-central Kansas become harder to clean up.
That’s because the pipeline that busted just outside the town of Washington on Dec. 7 doesn’t carry conventional crude oil. It carries a product of the Canadian tar sands called diluted bitumen that changes dramatically in chemical composition and behavior soon after escaping from pipes.
More:As pipeline operator searches for cause of Kansas oil spill, residents await cleanup
A National Academies of Sciences study found that transformation means the crude oil can start sinking below the water’s surface in a matter of days.
The Kansas spill occurred eight days ago and is now the second-largest spill of tar sands crude on U.S. soil.
The Environmental Protection Agency acknowledged Thursday morning that the crude was diluted bitumen, also known as dilbit. But the agency wouldn’t respond to questions about the implications of that fact for cleaning and containing the notoriously elusive crude oil.
And it wouldn’t disclose what methods were being used to verify the material is truly contained, even as Mill Creek continues to flow downstream.
TC Energy won’t answer those questions either.
Diluted bitumen found to have unique environmental risks
The same 2016 National Academies of Science study of diluted bitumen — a deep dive ordered by Congress in the wake of the nation’s largest inland spill of the stuff in Michigan in 2010 — found that bitumen’s peanut butter-like consistency poses special risks to the environment.
“When a significant fraction of the spilled crude oil” sinks below the water’s surface, the scientists concluded, “the response becomes more complex because there are few proven techniques in the responder ‘tool box’ for detection, containment, and recovery.”
Once it escapes its pipe, diluted bitumen also becomes far stickier than other types of crude oil.
In Michigan, the gunk proved so gluey that it was easier to haul rocks away that had been coated with it along the Kalamazoo River than to scrub the bitumen off of them, said Steve Hamilton, a biologist who advised the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on the cleanup.
“It’s almost impossible to clean from surfaces,” said Hamilton, a professor at Michigan State University and member of the National Academies of Sciences committee that wrote the 2016 report on diluted bitumen. “We tried hot water sprays and detergent and so on. … It’s extremely sticky once it has been exposed to air for a while.”
Of the estimated 14,000 barrels that spilled — nearly 600,000 gallons — out of the three-foot-wide Keystone pipeline, most has not yet been recovered.
In the 2016 report, scientists concluded that once the bitumen starts sinking, detecting it and retrieving it becomes very difficult. So does containing it.
“It ultimately took four years to clean up the Kalamazoo River spill,” Hamilton said Wednesday, “And you could argue that three and three-quarters of those years were all about (removing) submerged oil.”
One silver lining: The 2016 report suggests that although bitumen spills may harm water quality more than conventional crude oil spills, as the substance weathers, it may pose less risk of contaminating groundwater (as opposed to surface water such as creeks) and drinking water.
On Tuesday, the Kansas News Service asked TC Energy which specific detection techniques the company is using to verify whether the crude oil spilled in Kansas has been entirely contained within a four-mile stretch of Mill Creek.
The News Service also asked which specific cleanup techniques are being used to address the concerns of scientists that traditional crude oil cleanup approaches have limited success on diluted bitumen spills.
TC Energy wouldn’t offer specifics.
“We have the people, expertise, training and equipment to mount an effective response and clean-up, and that’s what we’re doing,” the company said in an email.
It repeated previous public statements that it has deployed booms at the site and said it sees “no indication” that the oil is passing its barriers.
“Our approach in any incident is to respond and clean up the site as quickly as possible,” it said, “reducing the opportunity for any type of crude oil, including diluted bitumen, to have a lasting impact on the environment.”
It also noted that its containment efforts were monitored by the EPA.
Cause of the spill remains unknown
The EPA says the spill has been contained to the 4 miles of creek that lie downstream from the pipeline break, and that the spill didn’t affect drinking water supplies, including wells.
The agency has coordinators at the site to oversee the cleanup.
Two underflow dams have been built, but they allow the stream to keep flowing under the water’s surface, where dilbit could already be present.
In 2007, the U.S. Department of Transportation decided it would allow the stretch of Keystone pipeline that runs from Nebraska through Kansas to Oklahoma to eventually operate at a higher pressure than is otherwise allowed because it would be made of stronger steel. It gave the final go-ahead a decade later.
On Thursday, the EPA said workers had pulled about 5,600 barrels of fluid from Mill Creek, though that fluid is a combination of oil and water. It says 5,000 cubic yards of oil-contaminated soil have been removed, and nine cubic yards of oily solids.
Tar sands oil, or bitumen, is far too thick to travel through pipelines. So companies in Canada force it into a more moveable state by mixing it with lighter volatile compounds.
But if a pipe breaks and the oil escapes, the diluted bitumen soon reverts to its original, sludgier consistency. The additives largely evaporate, leaving the ultra sticky, thick bitumen residue.
Bitumen doesn’t float on water, the way crude oil does. And that leaves a short time to capture diluted bitumen from the surface of rivers, creeks and lakes before the sludge disappears from view.
“This situation is highly problematic for spill response,” the National Academies report concluded, because “there are few effective techniques for detection, containment, and recovery of oil” once it has begun sinking.
And once it reaches the bottom of the water body, finding and cleaning it remains complicated. Retrieving generally involves dredging.
“Given these greater levels of concern,” the report concluded, “spills of diluted bitumen should elicit unique, immediate actions.”
The scientists expressed concern that federal policies that govern spill planning and response fell short of properly considering the special conundrums posed by diluted bitumen.
“Broadly, regulations and agency practices do not take the unique properties of diluted bitumen into account, nor do they encourage effective planning for spills of diluted bitumen,” the report said.
Most methods for trying to detect sunken bitumen don’t seem to work well, the report said.
The cause of the pipeline break in Kansas remains unknown, and a third-party analysis of the matter could take up to three months, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation administration that regulates oil pipelines.
The Michigan spill involved upward of 840,000 gallons (20,000 barrels) of oil. That contaminated more than 30 miles of the Kalamazoo River, plus nearby woodlands and wetlands. The sheer scale of the disaster was exacerbated by heavy rains.
It took four years and more than $1.2 billion to retrieve as much of the oil as was deemed feasible. Some amount was left because getting at the sludge is itself so damaging to the affected ecosystems.
Thousands of animals coated in oil were caught, treated and released.
In Kansas, TC Energy has said one beaver has been caught and is being treated.
The EPA added Thursday morning that four dead mammals and 71 dead fish have been found. It says biologists from the Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks are assessing injured and dead animals.
TC Energy has put its initial estimate of the Kansas spill at about 588,000 gallons.
The region saw some rain this week, but TC Energy says it built a second earthen underflow dam in recent days to brace the initial containment dam for the anticipated rain, and that containment remains successful.
This article originally appeared on Topeka Capital-Journal: Kansas Keystone pipeline spill is harder to clean up, experts say
The spill in Kansas is now the second-largest spill of tar sands crude on U.S. soil. And scientists say this stuff comes with major complications for containing and cleaning it.
Each day that passes, the hundreds of thousands of gallons of sludgy oil coating Mill Creek in north-central Kansas become harder to clean up.
That’s because the pipeline that busted just outside the town of Washington on Dec. 7 doesn’t carry conventional crude oil. It carries a product of the Canadian tar sands called diluted bitumen that changes dramatically in chemical composition and behavior soon after escaping from pipes.
More:As pipeline operator searches for cause of Kansas oil spill, residents await cleanup
A National Academies of Sciences study found that transformation means the crude oil can start sinking below the water’s surface in a matter of days.
The Kansas spill occurred eight days ago and is now the second-largest spill of tar sands crude on U.S. soil.
The Environmental Protection Agency acknowledged Thursday morning that the crude was diluted bitumen, also known as dilbit. But the agency wouldn’t respond to questions about the implications of that fact for cleaning and containing the notoriously elusive crude oil.
And it wouldn’t disclose what methods were being used to verify the material is truly contained, even as Mill Creek continues to flow downstream.
TC Energy won’t answer those questions either.
Diluted bitumen found to have unique environmental risks
The same 2016 National Academies of Science study of diluted bitumen — a deep dive ordered by Congress in the wake of the nation’s largest inland spill of the stuff in Michigan in 2010 — found that bitumen’s peanut butter-like consistency poses special risks to the environment.
“When a significant fraction of the spilled crude oil” sinks below the water’s surface, the scientists concluded, “the response becomes more complex because there are few proven techniques in the responder ‘tool box’ for detection, containment, and recovery.”
Once it escapes its pipe, diluted bitumen also becomes far stickier than other types of crude oil.
In Michigan, the gunk proved so gluey that it was easier to haul rocks away that had been coated with it along the Kalamazoo River than to scrub the bitumen off of them, said Steve Hamilton, a biologist who advised the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on the cleanup.
“It’s almost impossible to clean from surfaces,” said Hamilton, a professor at Michigan State University and member of the National Academies of Sciences committee that wrote the 2016 report on diluted bitumen. “We tried hot water sprays and detergent and so on. … It’s extremely sticky once it has been exposed to air for a while.”
Of the estimated 14,000 barrels that spilled — nearly 600,000 gallons — out of the three-foot-wide Keystone pipeline, most has not yet been recovered.
In the 2016 report, scientists concluded that once the bitumen starts sinking, detecting it and retrieving it becomes very difficult. So does containing it.
“It ultimately took four years to clean up the Kalamazoo River spill,” Hamilton said Wednesday, “And you could argue that three and three-quarters of those years were all about (removing) submerged oil.”
One silver lining: The 2016 report suggests that although bitumen spills may harm water quality more than conventional crude oil spills, as the substance weathers, it may pose less risk of contaminating groundwater (as opposed to surface water such as creeks) and drinking water.
On Tuesday, the Kansas News Service asked TC Energy which specific detection techniques the company is using to verify whether the crude oil spilled in Kansas has been entirely contained within a four-mile stretch of Mill Creek.
The News Service also asked which specific cleanup techniques are being used to address the concerns of scientists that traditional crude oil cleanup approaches have limited success on diluted bitumen spills.
TC Energy wouldn’t offer specifics.
“We have the people, expertise, training and equipment to mount an effective response and clean-up, and that’s what we’re doing,” the company said in an email.
It repeated previous public statements that it has deployed booms at the site and said it sees “no indication” that the oil is passing its barriers.
“Our approach in any incident is to respond and clean up the site as quickly as possible,” it said, “reducing the opportunity for any type of crude oil, including diluted bitumen, to have a lasting impact on the environment.”
It also noted that its containment efforts were monitored by the EPA.
Cause of the spill remains unknown
The EPA says the spill has been contained to the 4 miles of creek that lie downstream from the pipeline break, and that the spill didn’t affect drinking water supplies, including wells.
The agency has coordinators at the site to oversee the cleanup.
Two underflow dams have been built, but they allow the stream to keep flowing under the water’s surface, where dilbit could already be present.
In 2007, the U.S. Department of Transportation decided it would allow the stretch of Keystone pipeline that runs from Nebraska through Kansas to Oklahoma to eventually operate at a higher pressure than is otherwise allowed because it would be made of stronger steel. It gave the final go-ahead a decade later.
On Thursday, the EPA said workers had pulled about 5,600 barrels of fluid from Mill Creek, though that fluid is a combination of oil and water. It says 5,000 cubic yards of oil-contaminated soil have been removed, and nine cubic yards of oily solids.
Tar sands oil, or bitumen, is far too thick to travel through pipelines. So companies in Canada force it into a more moveable state by mixing it with lighter volatile compounds.
But if a pipe breaks and the oil escapes, the diluted bitumen soon reverts to its original, sludgier consistency. The additives largely evaporate, leaving the ultra sticky, thick bitumen residue.
Bitumen doesn’t float on water, the way crude oil does. And that leaves a short time to capture diluted bitumen from the surface of rivers, creeks and lakes before the sludge disappears from view.
“This situation is highly problematic for spill response,” the National Academies report concluded, because “there are few effective techniques for detection, containment, and recovery of oil” once it has begun sinking.
And once it reaches the bottom of the water body, finding and cleaning it remains complicated. Retrieving generally involves dredging.
“Given these greater levels of concern,” the report concluded, “spills of diluted bitumen should elicit unique, immediate actions.”
The scientists expressed concern that federal policies that govern spill planning and response fell short of properly considering the special conundrums posed by diluted bitumen.
“Broadly, regulations and agency practices do not take the unique properties of diluted bitumen into account, nor do they encourage effective planning for spills of diluted bitumen,” the report said.
Most methods for trying to detect sunken bitumen don’t seem to work well, the report said.
The cause of the pipeline break in Kansas remains unknown, and a third-party analysis of the matter could take up to three months, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation administration that regulates oil pipelines.
The Michigan spill involved upward of 840,000 gallons (20,000 barrels) of oil. That contaminated more than 30 miles of the Kalamazoo River, plus nearby woodlands and wetlands. The sheer scale of the disaster was exacerbated by heavy rains.
It took four years and more than $1.2 billion to retrieve as much of the oil as was deemed feasible. Some amount was left because getting at the sludge is itself so damaging to the affected ecosystems.
Thousands of animals coated in oil were caught, treated and released.
In Kansas, TC Energy has said one beaver has been caught and is being treated.
The EPA added Thursday morning that four dead mammals and 71 dead fish have been found. It says biologists from the Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks are assessing injured and dead animals.
TC Energy has put its initial estimate of the Kansas spill at about 588,000 gallons.
The region saw some rain this week, but TC Energy says it built a second earthen underflow dam in recent days to brace the initial containment dam for the anticipated rain, and that containment remains successful.
This article originally appeared on Topeka Capital-Journal: Kansas Keystone pipeline spill is harder to clean up, experts say
