Tag Archives: Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx

CPC-1232, Crude By Rail, Derailment, DOT-111, DOT-117, Explosion, Federal Regulation (U.S.), Fire, High Hazard Flammable Trains (HHFTs), Rail Safety, Tank car design

NY Times: U.S. Sets New Rules for Oil Trains – Sen. Schumer: DOT gave railroads too much time to remove unsafe cars

Repost from the New York Times

U.S. Sets New Rules for Oil Shipments by Rail

By Jad Mouawad

An oil train in Everett, Wash. There have been five explosions and spills involving oil trains this year, four in the United States and one in Canada. Credit Elaine Thompson/Associated Press

Ending months of delays and uncertainty, federal regulators on Friday disclosed new rules for safer transportation of crude oil by trains, introducing a new tank car standard and mandating the use of new braking technology.

The regulations, more than two years in the making, followed a spate of derailments, oil spills and fiery explosions involving oil trains around the country that have highlighted the risks involved in shipping large quantities of explosive material on rails through cities.

The rules state that the oldest, least safe tank cars should be replaced within three years with new cars that have thicker shells, higher safety shields and better fire protection. A later generation of tank cars, built since 2011 with more safety features, will have to be retrofitted or replaced by 2020.

It is the second time in weeks that the Department of Transportation has announced new rules for rail shipments to instill public confidence. Last month, it set lower speed limits for oil trains going through urban areas.

There have been five explosions and spills this year alone, four in the United States and one in Canada. In July 2013, 47 people died in Canada after a runway train derailed and exploded in the city of Lac-Mégantic, Quebec.

“I am hopeful the rail industry will accept this rule, and will follow this rule,” Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx said at a news conference in Washington. He appeared with Canada’s transport minister, Lisa Raitt, who said Canadian and American regulation would be aligned.

There has been growing pressure from local governments, members of Congress, safety experts and environmental advocates for federal action. The question before the administration was to determine what level of protection the new generation of cars should have and how quickly to roll them out.

The new rules create a new standard, “high-hazard flammable trains,” defined as “a continuous block of 20 or more tank cars loaded with flammable liquid or 35 or more tank cars loaded with a flammable liquid dispersed through a train.”

By 2018, the rule would phase out older tank cars, DOT-111s, long known to be ill suited for transporting flammable material. A newer generation of cars, known as CPC-1232, would have to be retired or refitted to meet the new standard, DOT-117, by 2020.

All cars built under the DOT-117 standard after Oct. 1, 2015, will have a thicker nine-sixteenths-inch tank shell, a one-half-inch shield running the full height of the front and back of a tank car, thermal protection and improved pressure-relief valves and bottom outlet valves.

Regulators retreated from a provision that would have forced railroads to notify communities of any oil train traffic. Instead, railroads will be required to have a “point of contact” for information related to the routing of hazardous materials.

Some critics asserted after Friday’s announcement that the regulations would do little to prevent another spill or explosion while older cars remained in operation.

On Thursday, seven senators, including Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, unveiled a bill that would seek to impose a $175 per shipment fee on older cars to speed up their removal from service.

Senator Schumer said Friday’s announcement gave railroads too much time to remove older cars from service.

“The good news is that the standards are predictable, but the bad news is that the phaseout time is too lenient,” he said. “Our railroads are changing, and are getting much busier because of all this oil business, and they will have to adapt. They can’t do it the old way.”

The Association of American Railroads said it backed the new tank car requirements but objected to a requirement that railroads should adopt new electronically controlled pneumatic brakes, or E.C.P., starting in 2021 for oil trains.

“The D.O.T. couldn’t make a safety case for E.C.P. but forged ahead anyway,” Edward R. Hamberger, the president and chief executive of the Association of American Railroads, said in a statement. “I have a hard time believing the determination to impose E.C.P. brakes is anything but a rash rush to judgment.”

Bakken Crude, Crude By Rail, Derailment, Explosion, Federal Regulation (U.S.), Fire, Light ends, North Dakota, Oil conditioning, State regulation, Volatile gases

New vapor pressure rule in North Dakota fails to account for additional explosion risks

Repost from Reuters
[Editor:  Reference below is to an important new Energy Department study on the volatility of Bakken crude.  – RS]

North Dakota’s new oil train safety checks seen missing risks

By Patrick Rucker, Mar 31, 2015 4:14pm EDT

WASHINGTON, March 31 (Reuters) – New regulations to cap vapor pressure of North Dakota crude fail to account for how it behaves in transit, according to industry experts, raising doubts about whether the state’s much-anticipated rules will make oil train shipments safer.

High vapor pressure has been identified as a possible factor in the fireball explosions witnessed after oil train derailments in Illinois and West Virginia in recent weeks.

For over a year, federal officials have warned that crude from North Dakota’s Bakken shale oilfields contains a cocktail of explosive gas – known in the industry as ‘light ends.’

The new rules, which take effect on April 1, aim to contain dangers by spot-checking the vapor pressure of crude before loading and capping it at 13.7 pounds per square inch (psi) – about normal atmospheric conditions.

The plan relies on a widely-used test for measuring pressure at the wellhead, but safety experts say gas levels can climb inside the nearly-full tankers, so the checks are a poor indicator of explosion risks for rail shipments.

It is “well-understood, basic physics” that crude oil will exert more pressure in a full container than in the test conditions North Dakota will use, said Dennis Sutton, executive director of the Crude Oil Quality Association, which studies how to safely handle fossil fuels.

Ametek Inc, a leading manufacturer of testing equipment, has detected vapor pressure climbing from about 9 psi to over 30 psi – more than twice the new limit – while an oil tank is filled to near-capacity.

About 70 percent of the roughly 1.2 million barrels of oil produced in North Dakota every day moves by rail to distant refineries and passes through hundreds of cities and towns along the way.

The state controls matter to those communities because there is no federal standard to curb explosive gases in oil trains.

North Dakota officials point out that the pressure limit is more stringent than the industry-accepted definition of “stable” crude oil. They also say that they lack jurisdiction over tank cars leaving the state and that the pressure tests are just one of the measures to make oil trains safer.

“We’re trying to achieve a set of operating practices that generates a safe, reliable crude oil,” Lynn Helms, director of the North Dakota Department of Mineral Resources, has said. Helms has also said that test readings for near-full containers were less reliable.

However, given different testing and transport conditions, industry officials say the pressure threshold may need to be lowered to reduce the risks.

Limiting vapor pressure to 13.7 psi in transit would require an operator to bring it to “something well below that” at the loading point, Sutton said.

The uncertainty about regulatory reach and safety has spurred calls for the White House to develop national standards to control explosive gas pressure.

“Let me be really clear,” Democratic Senator Maria Cantwell of Washington state told reporters last week. “They should set a standard on volatility.”

The National Transportation Safety Board, an independent safety agency, has already encouraged a federal standard for “setting vapor pressure thresholds” for oil trains citing Canadian findings linking such pressure and the size of explosions in train accidents.

Meanwhile, a leading voice for the oil industry is lobbying Congress to resist federal vapor pressure benchmarks.

Last week, the American Petroleum Institute urged lawmakers to oppose “a national volatility standard” and pointed to an Energy Department study that the severity of an oil train mishap may have more to do with the circumstances of the crash than the volatility of the cargo.

That same report said much more study was needed to understand volatility of crude oil from the Bakken. (For a link to the study: tinyurl.com/nvjqmxt)

The oil industry has said that wringing ‘light ends’ out of Bakken crude may keep a share of valuable fuel from reaching refineries.

Reuters reported early this month that Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx took his concerns about Bakken oil volatility to the White House last summer and sought advice on what to do about the danger of explosive gases.

The administration decided that rather than assert federal authority it would allow the North Dakota rules to take root, according to sources familiar with the meeting.

(Reporting By Patrick Rucker; Additional reporting by Ernest Scheyder in North Dakota; Editing by Tomasz Janowski, Bernard Orr)
Bakken Crude, Crude By Rail, Derailment, Explosion, Federal Regulation (U.S.), Rail Safety, Tank car design

7 Northern California Congress members call on feds to upgrade oil train safety now

Repost from The Sacramento Bee
[Editor: See also, Rep. Garamendi’s Press Release.  A PDF copy of the signed letter is available here.  See also coverage in The Benicia Herald.  – RS]

Sacramento area Congress members call on feds to upgrade oil train safety now

By Tony Bizjak, 03/02/2015 10:59 AM 
A BNSF train carrying 98 tankers of crude oil passes through midtown Sacramento from the North Dakota Bakken oil fields to a refinery in the Bay Area city of Richmond.
A BNSF train carrying 98 tankers of crude oil passes through midtown Sacramento from the North Dakota Bakken oil fields to a refinery in the Bay Area city of Richmond. | Jake Miille

Several Northern California representatives in Congress have sent a letter to the Obama Administration expressing displeasure that federal officials missed a self-imposed deadline to propose stronger safety regulations on trains shipping crude oil.

The Sacramento area is among many in the country that is seeing growing numbers of trains carrying volatile Bakken crude oil. Elsewhere in North America, several trains have crashed and exploded, including one carrying highly volatile Bakken crude in West Virginia several weeks ago that spilled oil into a river and set a forested area on fire.

Pressure is growing on federal officials to impose safety regulations. The federal government last year announced a series of potential rule changes, including requiring stronger tank cars, and set a January 2015 date for a likely ruling.

“Clearly action needs to be taken to increase the safety standards for rail cars transporting Bakken crude oil, and it must be taken now,” Rep. Doris Matsui, D-Sacramento, said in a press statement about the letter. “Our communities simply cannot afford any delay in implementation of stringent safety guidelines.”

The group, which includes Matsui, John Garamendi, D-Walnut Grove, and Mike Thompson, D-St. Helena, sent its letter Friday to the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration and Federal Railroad Administration, asking them to take action to make rail shipments safer.

“We understand that more than 3,000 comments to the rule were analyzed and we commend the DOT for its work with industry thus far on information sharing, slower speeds, and reinforced railcars, but the multi-pronged solutions for this important safety issue must be implemented as quickly as possible,” the group wrote in the letter.

“We also believe that DOT should issue a rulemaking that requires stripping out the most volatile elements from Bakken crude before it is loaded onto rail cars. This operation may be able to lower the vapor pressure of crude oil, making it less volatile and therefore safer to transport by pipeline or rail tank car. Additionally, we believe that track maintenance and improvements must be a priority.

“We need safer rail lines that are built for the 21st century including more advanced technology in maintaining railroad tracks and trains, so that faulty axles and tracks do not lead to further derailments. If more dangerous and volatile crude is to be transported through cities and towns and along sensitive waterways and wildlife habitat, the rail and shipping industries must do more.”

The letter from local leaders came a day after Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf sent a similar, high-profile plea to the president.

“The pace of federal rulemaking on rail safety is too slow,” Wolf wrote in a letter to Obama. “We urge that new federal safety rules be developed and implemented with a sense of urgency appropriate to the risk presented.”

Federal transportation officials said they are taking the final steps now in the process, but that the issue is complex.

“I’ve made the tank car rule a top priority for this department because the American people must have confidence that when hazardous materials are transported through their communities, we’ve done everything in our power to make that train as safe as possible, “ Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx said.

“This is a highly complex issue, consuming massive staff time, scientific study, dialogue with stakeholders and experts, and coordination across borders,” Foxx said. “The department has and will continue to put a premium on getting this critical rule done as quickly as possible, but we’ve always committed ourselves to getting it done right.”

Bakken Crude, Crude By Rail, Derailment, Evacuation, Explosion

MCCLATCHY NEWS: 2 West Virginia towns evacuated as another oil train derails, catches fire

Repost from McClatchy News
[Editor: Another excellent contextual overview and detailed report by Curtis Tate.  New in this report: CSX providing hotel rooms for evacuees; and discussion of WV refusal to provide hazmat notification to the public and estimate of 2 to 5 oil trains per week; and Sarah Feinberg, acting administrator of the Federal Railroad Administration is a West Virginia native.  – RS]

2 West Virginia towns evacuated as another oil train derails, catches fire

By Curtis Tate, McClatchy Washington Bureau, February 16, 2015 
Train Derailment
A fire burns Monday, Feb. 16, 2015, after a train derailment near Charleston, W.Va. Nearby residents were told to evacuate as state emergency response and environmental officials headed to the scene. JOHN RABY — AP

WASHINGTON — A train carrying crude oil derailed and caught fire Monday in West Virginia, less than two weeks after the U.S. Department of Transportation sent a package of new rail safety regulations to the White House for review.

The CSX train was traveling on the same route as another crude oil train that derailed and caught fire 10 months ago in downtown Lynchburg, Va. It was the second derailment in as many days of a train loaded with crude oil. Early Sunday, a Canadian National train loaded with crude oil derailed in northern Ontario. At least seven cars burst into flames.

In Monday’s derailment, residents of two small towns east of Charleston were evacuated, and at least one tank car fell into the Kanawha River, according to the West Virginia Department of Military Affairs and Public Safety. The river supplies drinking water for several local communities, and residents were urged Monday to conserve water.

The fire was expected to burn throughout the night.

A spokesman for the department said the 109-car train was traveling from North Dakota to Yorktown, Va., and that 12 to 15 cars had derailed. Trains from North Dakota’s Bakken region have been traveling to the Yorktown facility since December 2013, where the oil is transferred to barges for delivery to refineries on the East Coast.

Photos taken by local residents posted to Twitter showed a column of black smoke and fire that resembled the Lynchburg accident and others. Early Sunday, a Canadian National train carrying crude oil derailed in a remote part of northern Ontario.

Other fiery accidents have taken place in Casselton, N.D., Aliceville, Ala., and Lac-Megantic, Quebec. The latter derailment, in July 2013, killed 47 people and wiped out the town’s business district.

Those derailments prompted a series of changes by government and industry on both sides of the border, including operating practices, track inspections, train speeds and tank car design. The new rules currently under review by the White House Office of Management and Budget are scheduled for publication in mid-May.

The response to Monday’s derailment was complicated by a winter storm. The National Weather Service forecast a snowfall of 6 to 10 inches in the area.

Sarah Feinberg, the acting administrator of the Federal Railroad Administration, said investigators from her agency and the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration were on their way to the scene, about six hours from Washington.

“Both agencies are monitoring the situation closely and will commence official inquiries into the cause of the derailment,” said Kevin Thompson, an FRA spokesman. “The agencies are prepared to take all necessary enforcement actions following the investigation.”

Feinberg, a native of West Virginia, was appointed last month by Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx to lead the agency. Feinberg and Robert Lauby, the FRA’s chief safety officer, will assess the derailment site Tuesday, the department said late Monday.

The National Transportation Safety Board, which last month added tank cars to its list of “most-wanted” safety improvements, was monitoring the incident, a spokesman said.

CSX, based in Jacksonville, Fla., was providing hotel rooms to the evacuees and working with local emergency personnel at the derailment scene, the railroad posted on Twitter.

Following the Lynchburg derailment last April, the Transportation Department began requiring railroads to notify state officials of shipments of 1 million gallons or more of Bakken crude.

The West Virginia Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management declined McClatchy’s request to review the notifications in June, invoking an exemption under the state’s open records law because CSX had marked the documents “proprietary and trade secrets.”

However, the frequency of the shipments could be gleaned from surrounding states, notably Kentucky and Virginia, that did make the reports available to McClatchy and other news organizations.

The reports show that two to five Bakken trains a week traverse West Virginia.