Monthly Archives: March 2015

High Hazard Flammable Trains (HHFTs), Liquid natural gas, Union Pacific Railroad

Union Pacific aims to be first railroad to haul liquefied natural gas

Repost from The Omaha World-Herald

Union Pacific aims to be first railroad to haul liquefied natural gas

By Russell Hubbard, March 19, 2015 1:00 am
Union Pacific
THE WORLD-HERALD

Union Pacific Railroad has applied for permission to haul liquefied natural gas, which would add another combustible cargo to a U.S. rail network already being criticized for transporting ethanol and crude oil through populated areas.

The Omaha-based railroad said the application for a permit from the Federal Railroad Administration is in response to a request for liquefied natural gas transportation from an existing customer. Union Pacific operates 32,000 miles of track in the western United States, which is home to many natural gas production and storage installations.

If Union Pacific is granted the permit, it would be a first. The Association of American Railroads said none of the six other Class I freight railroads are hauling liquefied natural gas.

The permit application coincides with a major bump in railway ethanol and crude oil cargo, which has attracted heavy opposition after a fatal oil train explosion in Canada in 2013 and three oil train fires so far this year in the United States and one in Canada.

“The timing for U.P. is awkward given recent accidents and mounting public apprehension,” said Joseph Schwieterman, a transportation sciences professor at Chicago’s DePaul University. “I am sure there will be pressure for a go-slow approach on it, but the fact is that railroads are the best bet to get significant amounts of natural gas to market given the decades it takes to permit and construct pipelines.”

Details about the application are secret. A Federal Railroad Administration spokesman said application and supporting materials are not available for public inspection during the review process. “Federal law limits our disclosure” of which customer is requesting transport of liquefied natural gas, Union Pacific spokesman Aaron Hunt said.

Liquefied natural gas, or LNG, however, is a well-known commodity. Liquefying the fuel — which most often moves via pipeline, truck and ship — compacts it enormously. That makes it attractive to shippers and those who want to store large quantities. Liquefied gas takes up 1/600th the space of the gaseous form. The liquid gas can then be converted back into its gaseous state for use or further shipment in pipelines.

Union Pacific’s permit request comes as U.S. natural gas production is climbing, up 37 percent since 2000. Part of the boom is the conversion of coal-burning electric plants to natural gas. There also are 128,000 vehicles in the United States running on compressed natural gas, up 12 percent since 2010.

“It has only been a matter of time for the railroads to get in on the natural gas boom,” Schwieterman said. “It is a fast-growing industry with fast-growing logistical needs.”

But some people are holding back. Eddie Scher, an officer with ForestEthics, a California-based lobbying group that advocates the gradual elimination of fossil fuels, said that transporting another flammable cargo on the rail network is a very poor idea.

“The rail system in America was built to connect population centers, with trains going through every downtown in the country,” Scher said. “It was never designed to haul hazardous materials, and in fact, you could say that if you were to design a rail system for hazardous materials, the one we have is the opposite of the one you would design.”

Scher said federal safety rules are already out of date for oil trains and their tank cars, with millions of gallons of oil a day riding the rails, up from nearly zero only five years ago, courtesy of skyrocketing production from new fields in Montana and North Dakota.

“To entertain the idea of new and potentially more dangerous cargo makes no sense at all,” Scher said.

Hauling dangerous cargo is nothing new for Union Pacific and other railroads, which haul chlorine, explosives and sulfur.

Safety is a main point of emphasis for every cargo, said Hunt, the Union Pacific spokesman. The national train accident rate has fallen 42 percent since 2000 and 79 percent since 1980, according to the railroad association. At Union Pacific, derailments have fallen about 7 percent since 2010, to three for every million miles of train travel.

“We have the same goal as everyone else, and it’s in the best interest of our customers, shareholders and the communities where our employees and their families live, work and play to operate as safely as possible,” Hunt said.

Bakken Crude, CPC-1232, Crude By Rail, DOT-111, Oil Industry, Oil industry lobby, Rail industry, Rail industry lobby

Oil industry lawsuit against BNSF: a look behind the scenes

Repost from DeSmogBlog

Purposeful Distraction? Unpacking the Oil Refiners’ “Bomb Trains” Lawsuit vs. Warren Buffett’s BNSF

By Steve Horn, Tue, 2015-03-24 15:58

On March 13, American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers (AFPM) — the oil refiners’ trade association — sued oil-by-rail carrying giant Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNSF) for allegedly violating its common carrier obligation under federal law. A DeSmogBlog investigation has revealed there may be more to the lawsuit than initially meets the eye.

Filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas, Houston Division, AFPM sued BNSF “for violating its common carrier obligation by imposing a financial penalty” for those carrying oil obtained via hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) in North Dakota’s Bakken Shale basin and other hazardous petroleum products in explosion-prone DOT-111 rail cars.

AFPM‘s beef centers around the fact that BNSF began imposing a $1,000 surcharge for companies carrying explosive Bakken fracked oil in DOT-111 cars, as opposed to “safer” CPC-1232 cars, at the beginning of 2015.

The Warren Buffett-owned BNSF did so, argues AFPM, illegally and without the authority of the federal government.

“This $1,000 surcharge on certain PHMSA-authorized rail cars breaches BNSF’s common carrier duty to ship hazardous materials under the auspices of PHMSA’s comprehensive regime governing hazardous materials transportation,” wrote AFPM‘s legal team, featuring a crew of Hogan Lovells attorneys. “Allowing railroads to penalize companies that ship crude oil in federally-authorized rail cars would circumvent PHMSA’s statutory and regulatory process for setting rail car standards for hazardous materials shipments.”

Upon a quick glance, it seems like a fairly straight-forward case of federal law and an intriguing example of an intra-industry dispute. But as recent history has proven, the devil is in the details.

BNSF Surcharge Not Unique

Though unmentioned in AFPM‘s lawsuit, BNSF is not the only oil-by-rail “bomb trains” company promulgating a surcharge.

In February 2014, eight months before BNSF announced its surcharge, Canadian Pacific Railway Ltd. (CP Rail) and Canadian National Railway Company both announced their own DOT-111 surcharge intentions.

“CP Rail will add a $325 ‘general service tank car safety surcharge’ on each car of crude that is shipped in any container other than the CPC 1232 model, effective March 14, it said in a notice issued to customers,” Reuters reported. “The new tiered pricing scheme comes the same week that Canadian National Railway Co also confirmed it was increasing rates for the older variety of DOT-111 tank cars.”

In its lawsuit, AFPM disapprovingly cited minutes from a March 19 meeting held between BNSF higher-ups and U.S. Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) higher-ups in which a BNSF told PHMSA that “there needs to be [a] disincentive to use DOT 111.”

Those minutes were included as an exhibit to the complaint.

Yet in the Reuters article, CP Rail spokesman Ed Greenberg stated that his company had the same goal as BNSF: to “encourage shippers to work towards an upgraded tank car standard for crude by rail shipments.”

AFPM Lobbies vs. Regs, Funds Denial

As first reported here on DeSmogBlog, AFPM has attended meetings with the Obama White House’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), which serves as an industry-friendly mediator between industry and executive-level regulatory agencies like PHMSA. BNSF top-level lobbyists, executives and attorneys have also had a seat at the table at those myriad meetings.

PHMSA is expected to publish a final version of updated oil-by-rail regulations in May, after announcing a delay in January. AFPM also submitted comments in opposition to PHMSA‘s draft rules in September 2014, arguing it’s an issue of train tracks and people, not the rail cars themselves.   

“While AFPM supports appropriate and effective mitigation, several of PHMSA’s proposed measures fail to take meaningful steps toward preventing derailments, risk significantly reducing crude rail capacity, and cost billions of dollars,” wrote AFPM. “AFPM respectfully submits that any effort to enhance rail safety must begin with addressing the primary root causes of derailments and other accidents: (1) track integrity and (2) human factors.”

Beyond advocating against oil-by-rail regulations, AFPM also funded a May 2014 study concluding that Bakken crude oil is no more chemically volatile than any other oil.

“Bakken crude oil was found to be well within the limits for what is acceptable for transportation as a flammable liquid,” the report concludes. “This survey shows that Bakken crude oil does not pose risks that are significantly different than other crude oils and other flammable liquids authorized for transportation as flammable liquids.”

BNSF Responds — Sort Of

Five days after AFPM filed its lawsuit, BNSF responded in the form of a press release. Well, kind of.

“BNSF continues to review the complaint…challenging [its] recent implementation of rate discounts for crude shippers that load their product in rail cars with improved safety characteristics,” stated the company.

“This rate structure is also consistent with BNSF‘s ongoing efforts to ensure the safe transport of crude on our network, including voluntary adoption of enhanced operating practices around crude oil shipments and requesting the federal government to make newer, safer tank cars the new standard for crude-by-rail shipments, replacing the older DOT-111 and non-modified CPC-1232 cars.”

Purposeful Distraction?

So, what gives? Why a lawsuit against BNSF by AFPM and not against CN Rail nor CP Rail? No clear answers exist and AFPM did not respond to a request for comment sent by DeSmogBlog.  

Despite the murkiness at play, some answers do exist.

Firstly, CPC-1232 tanks cars — the centerpiece of the lawsuit — have proven no “safer” than DOT-111 tank cars to begin with. And secondly, the lobbying and advocacy track records of both BNSF and AFPM demonstrate they both prefer the status quo over robust regulations, which would hurt their corporate bottom lines.

Purposeful or not then, at the end of the day, the lawsuit still serves as a distraction for the central issues in the oil-by-rail debate as the May deadline nears for PHMSA to publish its final regulations.

Image Credit: Cartoonresource | Shutterstock

Rail infrastructure, Rail Safety, Train length, Train speed

REUTERS: Crackdown on oil trains in Canada?

Repost from Reuters

Exclusive: CN Rail derailment numbers soared before recent crashes

By Allison Martell, Mar 23, 2015 5:37am EDT
Smoke rises from fires caused by the derailment of a CN Railway train carrying crude oil near the northern Ontario community of Gogama, Ontario in this March 7, 2015 Transport Safety Board of Canada handout file photograph. REUTERS/TSBCanada/Handout via Reuters
Smoke rises from fires caused by the derailment of a CN Railway train carrying crude oil near the northern Ontario community of Gogama, Ontario in this March 7, 2015. Transport Safety Board of Canada handout file photograph. Credit: Reuters/TSBCanada/Handout via Reuters

(Reuters) – Canadian National Railway’s safety record deteriorated sharply in 2014, reversing years of improvements, as accidents in Canada blamed on poor track conditions hit their highest level in more than five years, a Reuters analysis has found.

Canada’s Transportation Safety Board (TSB) said on Tuesday that track failure may have played a role in CN’s three recent Ontario accidents, which have fueled calls for tougher regulation. The agency said oil unit trains, made up entirely of tank cars, could make tracks more susceptible to failure.

Data obtained under access to information laws and analyzed by Reuters shows a broader trend, which has not been previously reported, and could pile more pressure on CN Rail to slow down trains or reduce their length. A crackdown on oil trains could raise the cost of shipping Canadian crude by rail.

Trains operated by CN in Canada derailed along main lines 57 times in 2014, up 73 percent from 33 in 2013 and well above a 2009-2013 average of 39 accidents per year. On CN’s full 21,000 mile (33,800 km) network, which also includes the Midwestern and southern United States, freight carloads rose 8 percent last year.

At least 27 of the domestic derailments were caused by track problems, up from a previous annual average of 14. Data for smaller rival Canadian Pacific Railway showed no similar pattern.

“CN is keenly aware of its recent safety trends, starting with a sudden increase of its accident rate in 2014,” Canada’s biggest railway said in a response to Reuters’ analysis.

The railway pointed out that its performance improved between 2007 and 2013, and so far, 2015 has been better than 2014. It said it was reviewing recent trends and has started testing tracks more frequently, boosted spending on infrastructure and installed new technology to detect problems with its tracks and equipment.

For 2015 it is planning to increase capital spending by C$300 million, to C$2.6 billion ($2.1 billion).

The rapid rise of crude by rail traffic has made more derailments potentially deadly, exposing railways to more scrutiny, particularly since 2013, when a runaway oil train leveled the center of the Quebec town of Lac-Megantic, killing 47 people.

Doug Finnson, president of a Teamsters union representing CN Rail’s train crews, said he was particularly concerned with the recent Ontario derailments.

“We’re on the record saying the trains are too long, the cars are too heavy, and the trains go too fast.”

Click on image to enlarge.

Yet it is not clear what was behind CN’s poor safety performance last year.

BROKEN RAIL

New Brunswick farmer Paul-Emile Soucy, who experienced CN’s troubles first-hand, faults inadequate maintenance.

On Jan. 26, 2014, a CN train derailed crossing his 230-year-old family farm. He said CN workers had marked railroad ties that needed to be replaced months before the accident, but they were replaced only after the derailment.

“They knew that the ties were bad and rotten and had to be replaced, but they didn’t do anything about it,” said Soucy. Data obtained by Reuters indicates that a broken rail caused the derailment.

Click on image to enlarge.

But CN rejected Soucy’s criticism, saying it spent C$41 million on basic maintenance in the area between 2012 and 2014.

The railway blamed bad weather and increased freight volume for last year’s spike in derailments. Rough weather, however, did not prevent rival Canadian Pacific from improving its safety performance, and the rise in volume was far less pronounced than the jump in derailments.

Both railways shipped similar volumes of crude last year – CN moved 128,000 carloads, or some 2 percent of its freight volume, and CP moved 110,000 carloads, 4 percent of its total.

The safety watchdog TSB has suggested that oil trains may have contributed to track problems that caused the Ontario accidents, but declined to comment on whether those trains could also be behind the overall rise in derailments, or comment on Reuters’ analysis in general.

Transport Canada, the industry’s main regulator, also did not comment specifically on Reuters’ findings, but spokesman Zach Segal noted that Transport Minister Lisa Raitt has asked a parliamentary committee to invite CN Rail to discuss its operations.

CN suggested last year could have been an outlier.

“It’s important to view CN’s safety performance over a span of time to assess meaningful trend lines, not just on the basis of a single or two-year perspective,” the railway said.

Its own statistics, shared with Reuters, show that its Canadian accident rate declined 26 percent from 2007 to 2013, to 1.71 accidents per million train miles. In 2014, the rate jumped to 2.67, its highest in at least a decade, but it is down to 2.15 so far this year. A less commonly used measure, accidents per billion gross ton miles, has improved markedly over the last decade, but jumped 58 percent in 2014.

(See related INTERACTIVE map of Major Oil Train Derailmentsin the U.S. and Canada since 2013: here)

Reuters’ analysis showed last year’s spike in accidents was driven mainly by track problems.

Ian Naish, a former director of rail and pipeline investigations at the TSB, said weather and traffic could have played a role, but one should also consider the impact of unit trains, which carry single commodities, on tracks.

“The intensity of loading is heavier than a mixed-freight train, generally,” said Naish. “All the cars are the same design, and the loads are all the same, so it’s the same impact, the same way, all the time.”

Unit trains have long been used to carry coal, grain and other commodities, but oil trains are a product of the rise of crude by rail and the shale boom of the past few years.

CN declined to comment on its recent accidents in Ontario, citing ongoing investigations. It said, however, that it had seen no indication that unit trains cause accidents, noting that such trains carrying other commodities, many with heavier loads, have run safely for decades. But the railway said it was reviewing the issue with outside experts.

($1 = 1.2549 Canadian dollars)

(Additional reporting by Nia Williams in Calgary; Editing by Tomasz Janowski)