All posts by Roger Straw

Editor, owner, publisher of The Benicia Independent

Stationary Source Committee of the BAAQMD postpones discussion

Repost from The Contra Costa Times

Discussion of Bay Area oil refinery-related projects postponed to May

By Tom Lochner, Contra Costa Times | 04/22/2014

SAN FRANCISCO — A discussion of five Bay Area energy projects and their permit status was moved to next month, after a regional committee hosting it spent most of a morning talking about another matter of public concern, the tracking of emissions from petroleum refining.

The Stationary Source Committee of the Bay Area Air Quality Management District tentatively rescheduled the energy projects discussion to May 1, said committee chairman John Gioia.

The five projects are:

  • Crude oil shipment by rail to the Valero refinery in Benicia;
  • A WesPac Energy crude oil terminal in Pittsburg;
  • A propane and butane recovery project at the Phillips 66 refinery in Rodeo;
  • A hydrogen and sulfur recovery project at the Chevron refinery in Richmond;
  • Kinder Morgan’s ethanol and crude oil rail-to-truck transloading operation in Richmond.

Monday’s committee meeting focused on developing rules for tracking petroleum refining emissions.

Features under consideration include deploying “fence line” emission air monitoring systems and other community air monitoring systems; developing enhanced tracking methodology; and providing more opportunities for public review and comment. More hearings could follow, and the full board could consider adopting rules in October.

Issues of contention between environmentalists and representatives of refining industries include an emissions baseline, emissions reduction credits and a cap on emissions. Several environmentalists cautioned the board not to let tracking and collecting data become a substitute for action to clean the air.

Oregon Department of Transportation serving rail companies rather than public

Repost from The Oregonian
[Editor: QUESTION: has anyone asked the California DOT for similar information?  Here is a simpler version of this article from Grist: Oregon Tells oil companies to keep oil deliveries secret.   – RS]

ODOT acts to limit disclosure of oil train shipments after The Oregonian won its release

By Rob Davis | April 22, 2014
oil train report redactions
Heavily redacted forms released by ODOT show where oil moves by rail in Oregon and the specific volume. The agency plans to no longer seek the reports.

The Oregon Department of Transportation, the state’s rail safety overseer, says it will no longer ask railroads for reports detailing where crude oil moves through the state after The Oregonian successfully sought to have them made public.

Railroads “provided us courtesy copies with the understanding we wouldn’t share it — believing it might be protected,” ODOT spokesman David Thompson said in an email. “We now know that the info is NOT protected; so do the railroads.”

The result? At a time of heightened public concern about increasing volumes of crude oil moving by rail in Oregon, ODOT is reducing the flow of information that has benefited not only the public but its own employees.

State law requires railroads to annually submit detailed reports saying what dangerous substances they’ve moved, where and in what volume. They’re due to emergency responders across the state by March 1 of each year. That hasn’t been happening.

The reports have been sent to ODOT instead, which historically acted as a central hub, providing the information on request to firefighters across the state.

ODOT officials say that process needs reform. But as ODOT begins working to change those disclosure rules, its officials say they no longer need any reports.

“The exact quantity of those specific shipments doesn’t impact our work,” said Shelley Snow, another ODOT spokeswoman. “Our focus is on any and all shipments traveling through the state.”

If ODOT safety inspectors need to know anything about hazardous material trends, Snow said, they can call railroads to ask.

The reports ODOT has received are the public’s only way to know how much oil moves by rail through specific corridors in Oregon. They provide the most comprehensive view of the volumes hauled through Portland, Salem, Bend, Eugene and Klamath Falls.

oil train.JPG
Trains in Oregon carry the same type of flammable North Dakota oil involved in three high-profile explosions last year, including one that killed 47 people and leveled part of a Canadian town.  Rob Davis/The Oregonian

They’ve also been valuable for ODOT’s employees. Michael Eyer, a retired ODOT rail safety inspector, said he used the annual reports to do his job. The reports helped Eyer spot trends, see whether new hazards were moving and decide where to target his field inspections.

“It was our only institutional memory,” Eyer said. “There’s no other place to get the data, no other way to have this information.”

Railroads won’t tell the public how much hazardous material such as crude oil they move, saying it’s a security risk, even though the tank cars move openly in labeled containers.

The Oregonian in March obtained an order from the state Department of Justice that required ODOT to release the reports. Not disclosing them “could infringe on the public’s ability to assess the local and statewide risks” posed by crude oil rail shipments, a Justice Department attorney said.

The heavily redacted forms showed exactly where oil moved in the state through 2012. But ODOT said it did not have reports for 2013, a year in which oil-by-rail shipments increased 250 percent in Oregon.

The Oregonian requested 2013 records on April 14, more than a month after they were due. ODOT said it still didn’t have them and didn’t plan to seek them from railroads.

The decision typifies the unusual lengths to which ODOT goes to accommodate the railroads it regulates. Though it is supposed to be an independent safety watchdog, ODOT’s rail division treats the companies it oversees as cooperative stakeholders.

“I’m certainly concerned by what I hear and want to find out about that,” said state Rep. Barbara Smith Warner, a Portland Democrat who’s taken an interest in oil train safety.

Eyer and another retired ODOT rail official said the agency’s move is a bad idea that could threaten public safety.

“Because of your records request, they’re trying to bail out,” Eyer said. “I don’t think for safety it’s the wisest decision. It puts us in a situation where no one knows the overall picture. Things will fall through the cracks.”

If the reports aren’t collected, new rail inspectors hired by ODOT won’t have any background material to know what’s historically moved around the state, Eyer said. “Any new inspector coming in will be dependent on the kindness of strangers,” he said.

Claudia Howells, a former ODOT rail administrator, said forcing the state’s lone hazardous materials inspector to make phone calls to determine what dangerous substances were moving around the state would only add to the workload of someone already responsible for overseeing tens of thousands of shipments statewide.

“Part of the function of government regulatory systems is to act as a referee and provide assurance to the public that things are as they should be,” Howells said. “Right now, I have a higher level of confidence in the railroads than their regulator.”

Canada: 3-year phase out or retrofit of DOT-111 tank cars

Repost from Canada’s Financial Post

Canada to phase out in 3 years old rail tankers of type that exploded in Lac-Megantic disaster

Associated Press | April 23, 2014

Smoke rises from railway cars that were carrying crude oil after derailing in downtown Lac-Megantic, Que., July 6, 2013.

Canadian Press – Smoke rises from railway cars that were carrying crude oil after derailing in downtown Lac-Megantic, Que., July 6, 2013.

TORONTO  — Canada will require a three-year phase out or retrofit of the type of rail tankers involved in last summer’s massive explosion of an oil train that destroyed much of a Quebec town and incinerated 47 people, a government official told The Associated Press Wednesday.

Last July, a runaway oil train derailed and exploded in Lac-Megantic, Quebec, near the Maine border. Forty-seven people were incinerated and 30 buildings destroyed.

A government official confirmed the phase out of the DOT-111 tanker cars used to carry oil and other flammable liquids. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the official was not authorized to speak publicly ahead of the plan’s official announcement.

Canada’s Transport Minister will announce new rules later Wednesday in response to recommendations by Canada’s Transportation Safety Board in the aftermath of the tragedy. U.S. officials will be watching closely as the rail industry is deeply integrated across North America and both nations’ accident investigators implored their governments earlier this year to impose new safety rules.

The DOT-111 tank car is considered the workhorse of the North American fleet and makes up about 70% of all tankers on the rails. But they are prone to rupture. The U.S. NTSB has been urging replacing or retrofitting the tank cars since 1991.

Canada’s safety board has said a long phase-out would not be good enough.

Safety experts have said the soda-can shaped car has a tendency to split open during derailments and other major accidents.

There’s been intense political and public pressure to make oil trains safer since a runaway train with 72 tank cars of North Dakota oil derailed and exploded in Lac-Megantic. The train was left unattended by its lone crew member while parked near the town. The train came loose and sped downhill into Lac-Megantic. More than 60 tank cars derailed and caught fire, and several exploded, destroying much of the downtown.

Oil trains also have exploded and burned in Alabama, North Dakota and New Brunswick in recent months.

The oil industry has been increasingly using trains to transport oil in part because of a lack of pipelines.

U.S. freight railroads transported about 415,000 carloads of crude in 2013, up from just 9,500 in 2008, according to government and industry figures.

The oil trains, some of which are 100 cars long, pass through or near scores of cities and towns.

Some companies have said they will voluntarily take the DOT-111 tank cars offline. Irving Oil Ltd., a large Canadian refiner, has said it will stop using the older DOT-111s by April 30. Canada’s two largest railways, Canadian National Railway and Canadian Pacific Railway, have already said they would move away from the DOT-111. But it is the oil companies or shippers that own or lease many of the cars.

Fire safety officials to NTSB: very little we can do

Repost from the White Plains NY Journal News on LoHud.com

NTSB hears concerns on derailments of oil trains

Brian Tumulty, TJN  |  April 23, 2014
A CSX train carrying light crude oil makes it way through West Nyack on March 17, 2014.(Photo: Ricky Flores Ricky Flores/The Journal News)

WASHINGTON – Crude oil and ethanol fires caused by derailed freight trains are left to burn out on their own because first responders can’t extinguish them, fire safety officials told the National Transportation Safety Board on Wednesday.

“They are no-brainers,” Greg Noll of the National Fire Protection Association said during the second day of a two-day forum on safety issues linked to rail transport of crude oil and ethanol. “There is very little we as first responders are going to do.”

Even multiple fire departments located near the site of a railroad tanker fire don’t have enough foam to extinguish such blazes, which can spread from car to car. The DOT-111 tankers that carry most crude oil moved by freight rail can’t quickly vent high-pressure vapors that build up inside the cars, railroad experts said during the first day of the forum Tuesday. They said those vapors can ignite into a thermal mushroom cloud.

The use of so-called unit trains carrying up to 100 tanker cars of crude oil or ethanol is a relatively new phenomenon that risks catastrophic events such as the July 2013 accident in Quebec that caused 47 deaths and the evacuation of more than 2,000 people.

The engineer on that crude oil train failed to properly secure it on an incline when it was parked overnight. The train rolled into the community of in Lac-Megantic, derailing at a speed of 64 mph.

An estimated 434,000 tanker loads of crude oil were shipped by rail last year, compared to only 9,500 in 2008, according to the Association of American Railroads.

Much of that oil was carried, mostly on freight trains, from the Bakken Formation oil field in North Dakota and Montana to refineries on the East, West and Gulf coasts. Oil production in the Bakken field reached 1 million barrels a day in December and is forecast to peak at 2 million barrels a day in seven years, Skip Elliott of CSX Transportation told the NTSB.

Deadly derailments of trains carrying crude oil and ethanol also have raised questions about tanker car design, but industry groups say they haven’t been able to agree on the thickness of steel in the shell of new tankers.

Rail tanker manufacturers said they’re ready to increase production to meet increased demand, but want regulatory certainty about the future standard.

Industry officials said a disagreement over one-eighth-of-an-inch thickness of steel for the shell — whether to continue using 7/16ths of an inch or move to 9/16ths of an inch — led them to ask federal regulators to promulgate a rule setting the standard for new tanker cars.

The federal Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, which has jurisdiction over rail tanker car safety standards, has not yet proposed a new standard. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx, who oversees the agency, has told Congress no date has been set for releasing a draft of the proposed standard.