2016 Stop Oil Trains Week of Action – Benicia March Sunday 7/3!

Repost from STAND.earth
[Editor:  You can observe the Stop Oil Trains Week of Action in Benicia by marching in the annual Torchlight Parade on July 3.  – RS]

Citizens Call for a Ban on Deadly Oil Trains at Events Across US and Canada

  • The 2016 Week of Action marks the third anniversary of the tragic July 6, 2013, oil train disaster in Lac Megantic, Quebec, that killed 47 people.
  • On Friday, June 3, 2016, an oil train derailed in Mosier, OR, forcing the emergency evacuation of a 220 children from a school 250-yards from burning oil tank cars.
  • Oil trains have proven too dangerous for the rails: 14 major oil train derailments and fires in the past three years, yet these dangerous trains still bring millions of gallons of toxic, explosive crude oil through cities and towns across the US and Canada.
  • Each year since then communities have marked the solemn anniversary with events in dozens of cities and towns during the Stop Oil Train Week of Action.
  • July 6-12, 2016, citizens will gather again at events across the US and Canada to demand an immediate ban on oil trains. We are calling on President Obama, Congress and Governors to take three urgent steps to solve this problem.
    1. Ban oil trains: There is no safe way to transport crude oil by rail.
    2. Deny all federal permits for oil train infrastructure: Stop the oil industry from expanding oil train traffic carrying the dirtiest, most dangerous crude.
    3. Protect the authority of local governments: States, cities and citizens must have the right to say no to oil trains.Uphold the authority of our cities and towns to protect the public safety, and to ensure first responders have the necessary information and resources to respond to oil train disasters.

Oil Trains are Too Dangerous for the Rails.

  • The extreme Bakken and tar sands crude that the oil industry moves on trains is more toxic, more explosive, and more carbon-intensive than conventional oil.
  • More than 25 million Americans live in the blast zone and mining and refining this extreme oil puts  millions more Americans and Canadians at risk.
  • 14 major oil train fires in three years proves that crude oil is too dangerous for the rails. In Mosier, the tracks were inspected just days before the derailment, and only luck and a windless day kept the fire from four burning oil tank cars from reaching homes and a nearby school.
  • Oil train traffic, which was practically nonexistent seven years ago, has grown by 4,000 percent and the oil industry is proposing to further increase traffic, build more oil train terminals, and build new refinery infrastructure for dirtier crude oil carried by train.
  • We don’t need any of the extreme oil that is moving by train. The explosive Bakken and tar sands crude that moves by train is a tiny percent of US oil consumption and oil companies export five to seven times more oil each day than they move by train. So stop the trains tomorrow and our energy supply is not changed at all.
  • As we move our economy to clean energy and solve climate disruption we cannot at the same time allow oil companies to bring Bakken, tar sands and other fracked oil — the dirtiest, most dangerous sources of oil — onto the market.

Environmental Justice: Our railways were built to connect population centers, not carry hazardous materials. Decades of housing discrimination means that 60 percent of the 25 million Americans who live in the blast zone are people of color.

Note on Terminology: The term ‘crude-by-rail’ is the oil industry’s neutered term (abstract and without agency) for the dangerous, deadly, explosive oil trains they send through our cities and towns. There’s no reason to use ‘crude-by-rail’ when we can talk about the absolute danger of crude oil trains and the culpability of the oil and rail industry and regulators who send them across North America.

California attorney general subpoenas oil refiners

Repost from SFGate
[Editor:  See also coverage in Bloomberg, Reuters, Wall Street Journal and Los Angeles Times.  – RS]

California attorney general subpoenas refiners on gas prices

Associated Press, Updated 2:57 pm, Friday, July 1, 2016

The California attorney general has issued subpoenas to several oil refiners to learn how they set gasoline prices, which are consistently higher in California than in most other states.

Chevron Corp., Exxon Mobil Corp., Valero Energy Corp. and Tesoro Corp. confirmed on Thursday that they have received subpoenas in recent weeks.

The attorney general is making a sweeping request for information about gasoline supplies, pricing, and maintenance shutdowns that can temporarily create shortages and increase prices, according to people familiar with the investigation. The people spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss details of the subpoenas.

The requests came from Attorney General Kamala Harris, a Democrat who is running for the U.S. Senate. Kristin Ford, a spokeswoman for Harris, declined to comment on whether her office was investigating.

Chevron spokesman Braden Reddall said the company received a subpoena from the attorney general’s office and would cooperate with the investigation.

Valero received a subpoena “and we will respond accordingly,” said spokeswoman Lillian Riojas.

Spokesmen for Exxon and Tesoro also confirmed the requests for information. None of the companies would discuss the matter further.

California perennially has among the nation’s highest prices for gasoline. This week, the average for a gallon of regular was $2.90 in the state compared with the national average of $2.29, according to the AAA auto club.

Some consumer advocates have charged that refiners drive prices higher by tactics such as frequent or overly long plant shutdowns.
Refineries are routinely taken offline for maintenance, and there have been longer-lasting outages after disasters such as the explosion in February 2015 at an Exxon refinery in Torrance, near Los Angeles.

Gordon Schremp, senior fuels specialist with the California Energy Commission, said 2015 saw an “extraordinary price spike in magnitude and duration in California,” which a commission advisory committee has been investigating.

“We are aware that they were doing this,” Schremp said of the attorney general’s investigation, “because off and on they’ve talked to us about what was going on with the 2015 market, important factors that can cause spikes in the markets.”

Industry officials blame high prices on California’s stricter clean-air requirements, which they say add costs and make it more difficult to import gasoline from other states when there is a price spike.
Rebecca Adler, a spokeswoman for the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers, called the allegations in the subpoenas baseless.

“We are confident that nothing will come of this,” she said.

The group Consumer Watchdog has repeatedly called on Harris to investigate oil companies over California gas prices and welcomed news of the investigation.

“It’s great that we have a law enforcement official asking questions about both supplying the market and equitable pricing within the market,” said the group’s president, Jamie Court.

Washington Governor Inslee calls for halt to Bakken crude oil trains

Repost from Progressive Railroading
[Editor:  Significant quote: “A preliminary report issued last week by the Federal Railroad Administration determined that UP did not adequately inspect tracks in the area and that an electronic braking system would have resulted in fewer derailed cars.”  – RS]

Washington Gov. Inslee calls on USDOT to step up crude-by-rail oversight

Progressive Railroading, 6/28/16

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee met late last week with Federal Railroad Administrator Sarah Feinberg to call for a halt to Bakken crude-oil trains through his state until additional federal safety requirements are in place.

The meeting was held in the wake of a Bakken crude-oil train derailment in Mosier, Ore., which resulted in a fire that burned for several hours near the Columbia River Gorge. The Union Pacific Railroad train originated in New Town, N.D., and was on its way to Tacoma, Wash., when the derailment occurred.

A preliminary report issued last week by the Federal Railroad Administration determined that UP did not adequately inspect tracks in the area and that an electronic braking system would have resulted in fewer derailed cars. Sixteen cars derailed in the incident.

“It is unclear at this point whether the FRA has the authority to order a stop to unsafe oil train transport, but they committed to looking into what they can do and will revisit what can be done to halt UP’s Bakken oil train transport until necessary safety improvements are made,” said Inslee in a prepared statement.

Inslee also made a separate request to UP to halt all oil train shipments through Washington until the Class I improves its track inspection protocols.

In the past, the governor has criticized the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) for not going far enough to strengthen federal oversight of crude-by-rail shipment.

“Action at the federal level is imperative. Slower train speeds, faster phase-out of older tank cars and electronic braking systems are real actions that can prevent potentially devastating accidents,” Inslee said. “I made clear to Feinberg that federal regulators need to act on these things immediately.”

Washington State Department of Natural Resources cites wildfire risk to halt oil train plans

Repost from Fire Chief Magazine

Washington agency cites wildland fire risk to halt oil train plans

City of Vancouver also opposes oil transfer terminal
By Phuong Le, The Associated Press, June 30, 2016

SEATTLE — A Washington state agency in charge of protecting millions of acres of state land from wildfires is opposing a proposal to build an oil-by-rail terminal in Vancouver, citing risks of blazes from increased train traffic and other concerns.

The Department of Natural Resources urged a state energy panel to recommend that the project be rejected, according to a brief filed ahead of hearings that begin Monday.

The city of Vancouver also filed a brief stating its opposition to the project.

The Department of Natural Resources said that based on the evidence, the Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council cannot meet its obligations to assure the public that there are adequate safeguards and that the project will have minimal environmental impacts.

The council, which oversees the siting and permitting of large energy projects, will make a recommendation to Gov. Jay Inslee, who has the final say.

Beginning Monday, the panel will hear testimony from numerous witnesses during trial-like proceedings lasting several weeks.

“We’re all very concerned about the lack of safety and the probability that bad things will happen around derailments or other accidents,” Public Lands Commissioner Peter Goldmark said in an interview Wednesday. “We’re trying to persuade both (the energy council) and the governor that this is not a wise move. It’s not safe.”

In its filing, the Department of Natural Resources said the project would “create an increased risk of wildfire ignition along every mile of track used, both from heat and sparks creased by increased daily rail traffic and from catastrophic accidents.”

It says state firefighting forces aren’t equipped to handle those risks.

Tesoro Corp. and Savage Cos., operating as Vancouver Energy, want to build a rail-to-marine oil transfer terminal along the Columbia River that can handle an average of 360,000 barrels of crude a day. The facility would receive an average of four crude oil trains a day. The oil would temporarily be stored on site and then loaded onto marine vessels for transport to refineries on the West Coast.

Vancouver Energy says the project can be done safely and will provide jobs and tax revenue as well as reduce dependency on foreign oil.

“We live in the community. We work in the community. We play in the community, so it’s obviously important to us to make sure this is done safely and in an environmentally safe way,” Jared Larrabee, general manager for Vancouver Energy, said in an interview last week.

Tribal, environmental and other groups have intervened in the proceedings to oppose the project. They plan to raise concerns about the risk of train derailments, the potential for a catastrophic oil spill into the Columbia River, public health issues, tribal fishing access and toxic pollution.

For safe and healthy communities…