(Reuters) – Material discharged from TC Energy Corp’s ruptured Keystone pipeline was diluted bitumen, a type of heavy crude oil, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said on Thursday.
The 622,000 barrels per day (bpd) pipe has been shut since last week after it spilled 14,000 barrels of oil in rural Kansas.
More than 400 people are involved in the clean-up 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.
Bitumen 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.
(Reporting by Mrinalika Roy in Bengaluru; Editing by Sherry Jacob-Phillips and Krishna Chandra Eluri)
