Tag Archives: Truck transport

Oil spill, Pipeline rupture, Pipeline transport, Truck transport, Water contamination

Exxon seeks to use trucks to haul oil after pipeline break

Repost from KSBW News, Santa Barbara CA

Exxon seeks to use trucks to haul oil after pipeline break

Associated Press, Jun 05, 2015 1:06 PM PDT
Santa Barbara
Santa Barbara, KSBW

SANTA BARBARA, Calif. —An oil company wants to use tanker trucks to haul oil through Santa Barbara County while a pipeline that spilled crude into the Pacific Ocean last month is out of commission.

Exxon Mobil officials have told county officials they want to use a fleet of 5,000-gallon tankers for the job, the Los Angeles Times reported Friday.

Kevin Drude, head of the county’s energy division, said the company proposes to have trucks use Highway 101 daily, around the clock at a rate of eight trucks an hour to get the oil moving to refineries.

Exxon Mobil normally moves crude from three offshore platforms through more than 10 miles of pipeline owned by Plains All American Pipeline.

The movement has been stopped since the pipe ruptured on May 19 and released up to 101,000 gallons west of Santa Barbara. Thousands of gallons flowed down a culvert under Highway 101 and into the ocean at Refugio State Beach.

The trucking proposal is seen as risky by environmentalists.

“We don’t want another disaster,” said Linda Krop, chief counsel for the Santa Barbara-based Environmental Defense Center.

Glenn Russell, county planning and development director, said his staff will review the proposal and make a decision by Monday. He said he expects a similar request from another oil company, Freeport-McMoRan, which has also been affected by the pipeline shutdown.

Cleanup and investigations into corrosion that resulted in the failure of the pipe have been underway since the spill and there’s no timetable for putting the pipeline back in service.

Exxon Mobil would use the trucks until the pipeline is operational again, said company spokesman Richard Keil.

“We need to move our product by truck to serve the energy needs of Californians and the demands of the refineries we supply,” he said.

Exxon reduced oil production from 30,000 to 8,500 barrels a day and is storing the crude in tanks at Las Flores Canyon near the coast highway.

Russell said the company now has two weeks’ worth of storage space left.

Bakken Crude, CPC-1232, Crude By Rail, DOT-111, Truck transport

Kinder Morgan halts shipment of crude in Bay Area

Repost from The Martinez News-Gazette
[Editor: See also KPIX: Bay Area Crude Oil-By-Rail Shipments Halted After Price Per Barrel Drops Sharply.  – RS]

Kinder Morgan halts shipment of crude

Rick Jones | February 26, 2015

Cost-based suspension safer, but temporary

The falling price of oil has made Bay Area railways and highways a little more safe for the time being.

Kinder Morgan has halted shipments of volatile Bakken crude to its oil transfer station in Richmond. Kinder Morgan had been receiving shipments of Bakken crude oil from North Dakota several times a month on 100-car trains. One such train travels through Martinez along Highway 4. Trucks would then send that Bakken crude to Tesoro.

However, last November those shipments stopped as the freefall drop in the price of a barrel of oil made transporting Bakken crude by rail economically unviable.

“There is a cost of transporting crude. When demand is reduced and price will be reduced, it becomes not economically viable to ship (by rail),” said Martinez Councilmember Mark Ross.

Ross, a member of the Bay Area Air Quality Management District, said the cost of transporting the light Bakken crude is approximately $12 a barrel.

“We have to find a way to reduce demand for oil,” Ross said. “And when we do that, other good things happen. Cleaner air, less dangerous trains coming through our communities.”

The last train carrying Bakken crude oil passed through the Bay Area on Nov. 22. The oil was transported via rail from Stockton to Richmond.

A train carrying more than 3 million gallons of crude oil from North Dakota’s Bakken shale derailed in a snowstorm in an unincorporated area near Mount Carbon, West Virginia, on Feb. 16, shooting flames into the sky and evacuating hundreds of nearby residents from their homes.

The train, which was carrying crude to an oil depot in Yorktown, Virginia, derailed in a small town 33 miles southeast of Charleston, causing 20 tank cars to catch fire. All the oil tank cars on the 109-car train were CPC 1232 models, CSX Corp. said.

The CPC 1232 is the newer, supposedly tougher version of the DOT-111 car manufactured before 2011, which was faulted by regulators and operators for a number of years. U.S. and Canadian authorities, under pressure to address a spate of fiery accidents, are seeking to phase out the older models. The U.S. Transportation Department has recommended that even these later models be updated with improved braking systems and thicker hulls.

The fires, which destroyed one house and resulted in the evacuation of two nearby towns, were left to burn out, CSX said in a statement. No serious injuries were reported.