Dilbit Sinks in Enbridge Oil Spill, but Floats in Its Lab Study

A recent industry-backed study of diluted bitumen, the Canadian crude oil that would be shipped through the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, contradicts what environmentalists have said for years—that diluted bitumen, or dilbit, sinks in water and is much more difficult to clean up than conventional crude oil.

Instead, the study found that dilbit floats when it spills into water, a claim that contradicts what happened during a major dilbit spill in Michigan's Kalamazoo River in 2010. The cleanup of that spill already has cost more than $810 million, and the Environmental Protection Agency is still struggling to figure out how to remove the submerged oil.

The study is important because there is little scientific research on how dilbit reacts in water, and because the Keystone would cross thousands of U.S. waterways, including the critically important Ogallala aquifer in Nebraska.

But five scientists interviewed by InsideClimate News say the study was so narrowly constructed that it shouldn't be used to draw conclusions about dilbit. The experiment's laboratory conditions didn't reflect most real-life situations, they said, and the study ignored the consequences of the Michigan spill.

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