Number of crude oil trains declined as prices fell
The Associated Press, February 25, 2016 8:19 a.m. MST
OMAHA, Neb. — Freight railroads delivered 17 percent fewer carloads of crude oil last year after oil prices collapsed.
The Association of American Railroads said Wednesday 410,249 carloads of crude oil were carried across the United States last year, down from 493,126 carloads in 2014.
But the number of crude oil carloads remains well above the 9,500 carloads railroads hauled in 2008 before the boom took off in the Bakken region of North Dakota and Montana.
Oil prices have been hovering around $30 per barrel instead of the prices above $100 that were common a couple years ago.
Tank cars of crude oil have been involved in several fiery derailments in recent years. Rail accidents remain relatively rare compared to the total number of shipments, and the industry is working to reduce them.
Port of Longview Rejects Plan For Refinery, Propane Terminal
By Tony Schick and Conrad Wilson, Feb. 23, 2016 3:08 p.m
The Port of Longview is the state’s third largest port, after Seattle and Tacoma. Allison Frost/OPB
Port of Longview commissioners voted unanimously Tuesday morning to end talks with an energy company that wants to build the first oil refinery on the West Coast in more than 25 years.
The $1.25 billion proposal from Texas-based Waterside Energy touted 700 construction jobs and 180 full-time jobs. Waterside’s plan detailed a facility capable of refining 30,000 barrels of oil and 15,000 barrels of biofuel each day. The proposed project also included a propane and butane terminal handling 75,000 barrels per day. The plan also called for three additional trains per week carrying crude oil along the Columbia River.
The combined crude and biofuels refinery was an attempt to capitalize on the West Coast’s demand for cleaner-burning fuels.
That clean fuels component initially intrigued many, including some environmental groups and top state officials in Washington, but the financial and environmental fallout at the project backers’ failed biofuels venture in Eastern Washington ultimately raised many doubts about their latest proposal.
Longview Port Commissioner Jeff Wilson indicated the port shared doubts about the financial situation of Waterside Energy and its two subsidiaries.
“Financially I’m not comfortable with the three entities,” Wilson said.
Port commissioners said the company missed deadlines and failed to fulfill its obligation to the port.
A signed letter of intent between Waterside and the port required the company to provide certain financial information within 30 days. Port staff said those disclosures were intended to determine whether Waterside Energy had the financial backing to complete the project.
“This decision is not about fossil fuels,” Port Commissioner Doug Averett said. “It’s about the proponent not living up to his requirements and fulfilling his obligations.”
After the meeting, Longview resident Les Anderson said he was pleased with the commissioners’ actions. Anderson serves as vice president of Landowners & Citizens for a Safe Community, which has opposed other fossil fuel projects in the region.
“The community now can take a huge sigh of relief because this project was poorly conceived and pushed forward by bad actors with bad intentions,” Anderson said.
Kelso, Washington, resident Linda Horst referred to the project backers’ track record in Washington in praising the decision to reject the project.
“Bad people, bad partners for the port,” she said. “What they proposed to bring in here is something that could either kill us immediately outright through an explosion or over time, incrementally by pollution.
Waterside CEO Lou Soumas said the company had already spent $1.7 million on the project.
“We’re disappointed in the commission’s decision,” Soumas said. He added that he thought port commissioners had made their decision before they voted at Tuesday’s meeting.
“They didn’t go into the meeting without a decision in mind,” he said. “They’re doing this stuff behind closed doors.”
Soumas said Waterside was pursuing other ports and landowners in Washington and Oregon in an attempt to move the project forward.
Tougher Tank Cars Too Slow in Coming: NTSB’s Sumwalt
“A year after the Mount Carbon crude oil train fire, residents there know that they narrowly escaped their town becoming the American Lac-Mégantic – an outcome of a fiery derailment that could still happen at any moment,” NTSB Board Member Robert Sumwalt wrote Feb. 18, 2016.
By OH&S, Feb 22, 2016
The two are changing over U.S. railroads’ DOT-111 tanker cars that carry crude oil and ethanol so they meet the more stringent DOT-117 standard and implementing positive train control.
But DOT has decided to give railroads until 2025 to convert to the DOT-117 standard (which includes tank head shields, thicker shell material for increased puncture resistance, tank jackets and thermal protection systems with reclosing high-capacity pressure relief devices, and stronger protection for bottom outlet valves and top fittings) for those cars and until 2029 for tank carrying other flammable liquids, Sumwalt wrote.
As for positive train control, it was required to be implemented by 2015, but late last year the deadline was extended to 2018. “Some railroads have already advised the FRA they will need an extension to the extension, pushing implementation to late 2020,” Sumwalt wrote. “It takes effort and money to make changes to enhance safety, and the NTSB applauds the efforts thus far to implement PTC. But it’s time to finish the job.”
He began the post by commenting on the Feb. 15, 2015, derailment of 27 tank cars from a 109-car crude oil unit train near Mount Carbon, W.Va. “Crude oil was released from the derailed cars and immediately ignited into a pool of fire. Emergency responders evacuated 1,100 people within a half-mile radius of the accident and allowed the fire to burn itself out,” he wrote. “All of the cars involved in the Mount Carbon accident were the enhanced DOT-111 tank cars built to the industry’s CPC-1232 standard, the best available general service tank car at the time of the accident. Yet, the fire created by two punctured tank cars resulted in 13 adjacent tank cars becoming breached when heat exposure weakened their shells, which were not equipped with thermal protection systems.”
Sumwalt listed several other derailments in the United States that involved the release of flammable materials and post-accident fires, and he cited the terrible example of the derailment of a train hauling Bakken crude oil in Lac–Mégantic, Quebec, in July 2013, killing 47 people.
NTSB would have preferred a more aggressive DOT-117 implementation schedule and awaits concerted efforts by the railroads to upgrade their existing DOT-111 tank cars in flammable liquids service to the new DOT-117 standard or relegate them to carrying less dangerous cargo, he added.
“A year after the Mount Carbon crude oil train fire, residents there know that they narrowly escaped their town becoming the American Lac-Mégantic – an outcome of a fiery derailment that could still happen at any moment,” he wrote.
Valero Crude By Rail: Extreme Crude as Extreme Threat
By Charles Davidson, Hercules CA, February 20, 2016
Lynne Nittler of Davis, CA
Like many other fossil fuel infrastructure expansions in the Bay Area, the Valero Crude by Rail project is a key part of the transition to greater processing of extreme crudes. Yet another project poses significant, yet unnecessary public health hazards—this time to Benicia, the Bay Area, the Delta ecosystem and all communities up-rail from Benicia.
Valero’s recently completed Valero Improvement Project, or VIP, was designed to facilitate the processing of much higher sulfur and heavier crudes than the refinery’s former crude oil slate. The VIP permitted the Refinery to process heavier, high sulfur feedstocks as 60% of total supply, up from only 30% prior to the VIP. The project also raised the average sulfur content of the imported raw materials from past levels of about 1 – 1.5% up to new levels of about 2 – 2.5% sulfur.
Now, Valero’s proposed Crude by Rail Project is specifically designed for the importation into Valero of so-called “mid-continent, North American” crudes, which would be either very lightweight, highly flammable shale oil from Bakken ND or extra heavy tar sands from Alberta Canada. However, because the Valero Crude by Rail Project combined with the VIP are related parts of a single expanded heavy oil project, the Crude by Rail Project is most likely for the delivery of tar sands (bitumen).
Tar sands is open pit mined as a solid; it does not start out as a liquid. The Bitumen mined in Northern Canada needs to be heated to several hundred degrees before it can be diluted with chemical solvents and made to flow into railroad tank cars. According to the recent Carnegie Endowment study, Know Your Oil: Towards a Global Climate-Oil Index, tar sands refining produces three times the climate-changing greenhouse gases in order to make gasoline, compared to traditional lighter crudes.
Worse, in a 2007 US Geological Service study, it was reported that tar sands bitumen contains 102 times more copper, 21 times more vanadium, 11 times more sulfur, six times more nitrogen, 11 times more nickel, and 5 times more lead than conventional heavy crude oil. Sulfur and nitrogen oxide pollutants contribute to smog, soot, acid rain and odors that affect nearby residents. Because of these considerations, Benicia could likely experience an increase in local air pollution, and the refinery’s equipment could suffer enhanced sulfur corrosion, leading to potential accidents, such as documented for the 2012 Richmond Chevron fire.
The tar sand diluent itself adds significant risk: it is a highly flammable solvent that tends to separate from the heavier mixture during travel. In a derailment this could cause an explosive fire with a uniquely hazardous tar sands smoke plume. The diluted tar sands mixture would tend to rapidly sink very deep into the soil, with the diluent eventually evaporating and then leaving the tar sands bitumen deep underground.
A significant tar sands spill, in places like the environmentally sensitive Feather River Canyon, the Delta or the Suisun Marsh would be impossible to clean up. This was proven in Michigan’s 2010 Kalamazoo River Enbridge pipeline rupture, which will never be remediated, despite the spending of over 1 billion dollars to date. Nearby public infrastructure needs to be considered from a public health perspective; for example, East Bay MUD and others are doing a brackish delta water desalination pilot study near Pittsburg.
We must deny Valero the CBR permit and help keep the world’s absolutely dirtiest oil in the ground. To do so would comply with the expressed wishes of the Sacramento Area Council of Governments composed of six counties and 22 municipalities up-rail from Valero who have also asked that this project be denied. Our massive turnout at the Planning Commission hearings achieved our first step in this goal with a unanimous vote of the Planning Commission to deny the land use permit. Now we must continue our opposition to insure the full Benicia City Council follows this path.
