Tag Archives: Federal Railroad Administration

Bakken Crude, Crude By Rail, Derailment, Emergency Readiness & Response, Evacuation zone, Explosion, Oil stabilization, Rail inspection, Rail routing, Railroad crossings, Tank car design

Reroute oil trains? History suggests it’s a long shot

Repost from The Star Tribune, Minneapolis MN

Reroute oil trains? History suggests it’s a long shot

By Jim Spencer, March 21, 2015 – 8:22 PM

Industry says reinforced cars on current routes are better than trying to avoid heavily populated areas.

A train carried Bakken oil past St. Paul. Federal rules say a single tanker car spill and fire would require a half-mile evacuation. Photo: Star Tribune

WASHINGTON – Last week, U.S. Sen. Al Franken asked the Federal Railroad Administration to consider rerouting trains carrying volatile Bakken crude oil from North Dakota so they do not pass through Minnesota’s biggest cities.

For Franken, the possibility of rerouting is an integral part of a comprehensive response to a recent rash of fiery oil train derailments that also includes stabilizing Bakken crude before it is loaded into stronger tanker cars.

For the nation’s powerful railroad lobby, however, rerouting is an unwarranted intrusion into a rail safety system that the industry says works.

Government-ordered rerouting of private rail traffic is not exactly a snowball in hell. It is more like a blizzard in Bahrain — possible, but unprecedented.

In Minnesota and around the country, “rerouting issues ought to be high on everyone’s agenda,” said rail safety expert Fred Millar, who fought unsuccessfully against railroads to move chlorine trains out of the District of Columbia. “But rerouting has been pushed off the table.”

Congress created the Federal Railroad Administration in 1966. In nearly half a century it does not appear to have forced any railroads to reroute trains around big cities for safety reasons, despite computer modeling that estimates routing changes could lower citizens’ risks to hazardous materials derailments by 25 to 50 percent and reduce casualties in an actual derailment by half.

The Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT) last week estimated that 326,170 state residents live within a half-mile of rail routes that carry oil from North Dakota across Minnesota. A half-mile is the federal emergency response evacuation zone required in the event of a single tanker car spill and fire. Multiple-car fires require up to a mile evacuation.

MnDOT data shows that 156,316 of the Minnesotans subject to evacuation in an oil train derailment live in the Twin Cities metro area. Most North Dakota oil trains enter Minnesota at Moorhead, then travel on BNSF Railway and Canadian Pacific Railway tracks into the Twin Cities before turning south along the Mississippi River and east across Wisconsin. A few oil trains travel through western Minnesota into Iowa.

Although the National Transportation Safety Board has backed rerouting in some circumstances, federal laws passed in 2007 grant private rail companies wide latitude in determining when and where trains should move, even trains carrying hazardous materials.

Canadian Pacific did not comment specifically on rerouting trains in Minnesota, but in an e-mail to the Star Tribune, the railroad said it has voluntarily complied with the federal government’s Crude by Rail Safety Initiatives and performed “route risk assessments.”

BNSF, the largest crude-by-rail hauler out of North Dakota, declined to comment on rerouting and referred questions to the rail industry’s major trade group, the Association of American Railroads.

An AAR spokesman said the industry opposes re-routing oil trains because the existing routes are the safest, even when they pass through urban areas. The industry supports more structurally secure tanker cars, track inspections and training of emergency response teams, said AAR media relations director Ed Greenberg.

BNSF also has invested heavily in track improvements to increase safety along its existing Minnesota oil train routes.

“We’re using routing technology called the Rail Corridor Risk Management System developed by the federal government,” Greenberg said. The technology measures 27 factors — including population density — to determine the safest route for moving hazardous materials, including crude oil, Greenberg said.

“Rerouting isn’t the answer,” he maintained. “All it has accomplished in the past is to force rail traffic through other communities on tracks not built to accommodate products like crude oil.”

The Federal Railroad Administration declined to discuss rerouting oil trains in Minnesota. In an e-mail statement, acting administrator Sarah Feinberg said of Franken’s request: “Over the past 18 months we have taken more than a dozen actions to enhance the safe transport of crude oil while working on a comprehensive rule that is now in its final stages of development.”

The state has little say in the rerouting debate. “The railroads are regulated by the federal government,” Minnesota Department of Transportation spokesman Kevin Gutknecht said. “The state does not have the authority to move, or reroute, rail lines.”

Rerouting trains away from the Twin Cities is not part of a rail safety initiative unveiled March 13 by Gov. Mark Dayton. That proposal calls for spending $330 million over 10 years, much of it in greater Minnesota, mainly to make road-rail crossings safer and to improve emergency response.

Bakken Crude, Crude By Rail, Hazmat notification, Oil Industry, Oil spill, Rail Safety, Spill prevention and response, State regulation

Washington State rail regulators to Fine BNSF for not reporting leaks immediately

Repost from The Bellingham Herald

State rail regulators: Fine BNSF for not reporting leaks immediately

By Samantha Wohlfeil, March 19, 2015 
Ferndale Siding PAD
BNSF rail cars on the railroad siding in Custer, Friday Aug. 22, 2014. The railroad is building a new siding from Ferndale to Custer. PHILIP A. DWYER — The Bellingham Herald

Washington state regulators have recommended BNSF Railway be fined up to $700,000 for failing to properly report more than a dozen hazardous materials spills in recent months despite the fact state staff had reminded the company how to do so last fall.

On Thursday, March 19, the state Utilities and Transportation Commission staff announced it found BNSF had failed to report 14 releases of hazardous materials, including crude oil leaks, within a half hour of learning about the leaks, as required by state law.

In one case, crews at BP Cherry Point refinery found crude oil had leaked onto the sides and wheels of a tank car, which was found to be 1,611 gallons short. That was on Nov. 5, but the UTC didn’t find out about it until Dec. 3, when it got a copy of the report BNSF sent to the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration. Railroads have 30 days to file that type of report.

When contacted about the incident by a McClatchy reporter in January, BNSF said the train was “not in transit, not on our property and not in our custody” when the spill was detected, and the company had submitted the required reports to state and federal regulators.

In another case from Jan. 12 and 13, a train hauling 100 cars of Bakken crude oil from North Dakota to the Tesoro refinery in Anacortes had more than a dozen leaking cars discovered in multiple stops as it crossed the state.

Although the UTC sent an investigator to look at the leaking cars as part of a Federal Railroad Administration investigation, BNSF didn’t report the incident to the state’s 24-hour hotline at the Emergency Management Division until two weeks later. The hotline duty officer is in charge of alerting the various state agencies that might need to respond to a spill.

When asked by The Bellingham Herald in February why the January incident was reported more than a week later, BNSF spokeswoman Courtney Wallace replied that BNSF staff members thought they were following proper protocols, and had amended their Washington reporting policy following discussions with the UTC in January.

But the investigation released by the UTC on Thursday shows that on Oct. 22, 2014, the UTC had emailed a copy of the state’s reporting requirements to Patrick Brady, BNSF’s director of hazardous materials and special operations, in an effort to make sure BNSF knew how to report accidents.

As copied into the body of the Oct. 22 email to Brady, the state law regulating accident reports ( WAC 480-62-310) lists the hotline number, which types of incidents must be reported, and states that railroad companies must call within 30 minutes of learning of the event.

On Dec. 3, Brady emailed the UTC again asking, “Can you send me the regulatory reference to spill notification to the UTC?” Staff members again emailed Brady the state law on reporting requirements, according to emails included in the investigation.

From Nov. 1, 2014, to Feb. 24, UTC staff found BNSF committed 700 violations of the reporting requirement. Every day an incident goes unreported counts as a separate violation, per state law.

In addition to the leaking crude oil incidents, the UTC announcement lists a variety of leaks that occurred throughout the state: a tank car dripping gas/oil from a bottom valve in Spokane Valley on Dec. 8, 2014; cars leaking “primary sludge” found in incidents in Seattle, Vancouver and Everett in December; two 100-gallon spills of lube oil from locomotives in December and January, among others.

The commission could opt to fine the company $1,000 per violation of the reporting law, but no fine has been issued yet. The commission will set a final penalty after BNSF gets the chance to have a hearing.

“When a company fails to notify the (state Emergency Operations Center) that a hazardous material incident has occurred, critical response resources may not be deployed, causing potential harm to the public and the environment,” the UTC announcement states.

BNSF was still reviewing the report when contacted for comment on Thursday.

“In regards to reporting releases in Washington state, we believed we were complying in good faith with the requirements from our agency partners,” BNSF’s Wallace wrote in a statement. “Following guidance from the UTC in January 2015, BNSF reviewed its reporting notification process and amended its practices to address concerns identified by the UTC. We will continue to work closely with the UTC moving forward on this issue.”

BNSF is the largest railroad company operating in Washington.

Bakken Crude, Crude By Rail, Derailment, Explosion, Federal Regulation (U.S.), Fire, Oil Industry, Rail industry, Tank car design, Tank car retrofit

Federal Railroad Admin: oil industry must do more to boost train safety

Repost from Reuters

Oil industry must join U.S. railroads to boost train safety – regulator

By Patrick Rucker, Mar 13, 2015 6:06pm EDT

WASHINGTON, March 13 (Reuters) – Rail operators are going to great lengths to prevent oil train derailments but the energy sector must do more to prevent accidents from becoming fiery disasters, the leading U.S. rail regulator said on Friday.

Oil train tankers have jumped the tracks in a string of mishaps in recent months that resulted in explosions and fires.

Several of those shipments originated from North Dakota’s Bakken energy fields. Officials have warned that fuel from the region is particularly light and volatile.

Sarah Feinberg, acting head of the Federal Railroad Administration, said the energy industry must do more to control the volatility of its cargo.

“(We) are running out of things that we can put on the railroads to do,” she said. “There have to be other industries that have skin in the game.”

A national safety plan for oil trains, due to be finalized in May, would require trains to have toughened tankers, advanced braking and other safety improvements.

The plan, however, would do nothing to mute the dangers of the fuel itself.

As officials try to prevent mishaps, they will also highlight the energy companies that supplied crude oil involved in accidents, Feinberg said.

Officials want to identify publicly “the owner of the product when we talk about these derailments,” she said.

The American Petroleum Institute said it hoped to work with the rail industry and other stakeholders to prevent mishap.

“Our safety goal, along with the railroads, is zero incidents,” said Brian Straessle, a spokesman for the trade group.

While U.S. officials have warned for more than 12 months that Bakken fuel can be volatile, the verdict is mixed on whether that contributes to the intensity of accidents.

In September, the FRA determined that Bakken crude oil may be no more explosion-prone than other fuels carried by rail.

Ethanol, a corn-based gasoline additive, “poses a similar, if not greater, risk as (Bakken) crude oil when released from a tank car failing catastrophically and resulting in a large fireball type fire,” according to a study from the agency.

On Friday, the FRA said that about 6,000 tankers had a top valve that allowed small amounts of oil to escape. The agency said it ordered the fitting to be replaced and said it would work with industry to identify and replace defective parts more quickly.

That defect was not believed to have played a role in any mishaps, the FRA said.

(Reporting by Patrick Rucker; Editing by Dan Grebler, Bernard Orr)
Bakken Crude, Canadian regulation, Crude By Rail, Derailment, Explosion, Federal Regulation (U.S.), Fire, Massive increase in crude-by-rail, Oil stabilization, Sloshing effect, Train speed, Volatility

Speed Limits May Not Stop Fiery Oil Spills, U.S. Rail Chief Says

Repost from Bloomberg Business News

Speed Limits May Not Stop Fiery Oil Spills, U.S. Rail Chief Says

By Jim Snyder, March 13, 2015 1:15 PM PDT

(Bloomberg) — Lower speed limits for railroads may be ineffective at keeping oil trains on the tracks and preventing massive fireballs, such as those triggered in a series of recent derailments, the chief U.S. railroad regulator said.

“If you’re going to slow trains down, you’re going to have to slow them down to 12 miles an hour,” Sarah Feinberg, acting chief of the Federal Railroad Administration, told reporters in Washington Friday.

“And then you would just have other dangers. People queuing up at grade crossings while train car after train car of volatile product goes by,” she said. “That’s not good either.”

A surge in U.S. oil production has increased the amount of crude moved by rail 5,000 percent since 2009, much of it from North Dakota’s booming Bakken field. A corresponding jump in accidents, including a 2013 oil-train derailment and explosion that killed 47 people in Lac-Megantic, Quebec, have led U.S. and Canadian regulators to propose tougher standards for trains.

Speeds higher than 25 mph were “irresponsible” given the known weakness of the tank cars carrying the crude, Jim Hall, a former chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board, said in written comments to the Transportation Department.

Hall was responding to a proposed department rule that would require the current fleet of tank cars to be replaced. A draft is being reviewed at the White House Office of Management and Budget and is expected to be final in May.

Sloshing Effect

The Federal Railroad Administration also is studying whether slower speeds can cause a sloshing effect in tank cars, making it harder to prevent the rolling stock from wobbling off the tracks, Feinberg said.

Railroads have lobbied against new limits, saying they would result in costly delays for many of the goods hauled by rail.

Two oil-trains that derailed in the past four weeks, in West Virginia and Illinois, and created massive fireballs were traveling well below federal speed limits, Feinberg said.

Railroads last year agreed to slow trains to 40 mph from 50 mph when carrying crude through High Urban Threat Areas, a designation that covers more than three dozen U.S. communities.

“We are running out of things that I think we can ask for the railroads to do, and there have to be other industries that have skin in the game,” Feinberg said. “There also has to be attention placed on the product actually going into the railcar.”

In April, a regulation in North Dakota that requires oil to be kept at a vapor pressure below 13.7 pounds per square inch goes into effect. Feinberg said a process known as conditioning, which companies can use to meet that standard, is the “bare minimum” step to lower volatility.

Feinberg said the administration is considering further steps to reduce oil’s explosiveness before its loaded into tank cars, though the draft rule under review is silent on the issue.