All posts by Roger Straw

Editor, owner, publisher of The Benicia Independent
CPC-1232, Diluted bitumen (Dilbit), DOT-111, Phillips 66, Tar sands crude

SANTA BARBARA INDEPENDENT: Oil Train Roulette

Repost from The Santa Barbara Independent

Oil Train Roulette

Oppose Bringing Dangerous Cargo Through

By Arlo Bender-Simon, February 22, 2015

Russian roulette is a dangerous game of chance. A bullet is placed into a revolver, and the chamber is revolved. You’ve got a one in six chance that when you pull the trigger a bullet will come out. Be careful where you point that thing!

Allowing oil trains to pass through a community is like playing a game of Russian roulette. Granted, your chances are exponentially better than 1 in 6, but if a disaster were to happen, it would not be just you who gets hurt.

Right now, Phillips 66 (an oil refining company that recently spun off from ConocoPhillips) would like to be allowed to expand its refinery in Nipomo so that it can process shipments of crude oil delivered by trains. The tar sands crude is thick and shipped as “diluted bitumen” — in other words, with chemicals added to make it more fluid and easier to transport. A highly flammable byproduct even remains in the tank cars after they’ve been emptied.

Nipomo is in San Luis Obispo County, so our local officials can do little about this. But they can do something! They can join officials up and down the train route and pass a resolution, or send a letter, in opposition. This has been done by Ventura County, and the cities of Oxnard, Moorpark, Camarillo, Simi Valley, San Jose, Oakland, Sacramento, and many others.

This refinery may be in a neighboring county, but this is a big deal for Santa Barbara. Trains will be allowed to arrive at this refinery on the coast from either the north or the south. If this project is approved, oil trains will be passing through Santa Barbara County.

The proposal from Phillips 66 would allow 260 mile-and-a-half-long trains to offload crude oil at the Nipomo refinery every year. This translates to 520 trips up and down the California coast by crude-carrying trains that will shut down intersections, blare their horns, rumble through our communities, and spew gaseous contamination into the air. The inconvenience, air deficits, and upset are nothing compared to the real threats the loads pose to the health of our communities.

The Phillips 66 tanker fleet is composed entirely of model DOT-111 tanker cars. In July 2014, the US Department of Transportation decided that DOT-111s are extremely failure prone and outmoded; the newer, thicker-walled DOT-117 is recommended. Unfortunately, even the train-car builders warn no amount of extra metal or engineering can protect against breakage during a high-speed derailment.

The reality of oil train derailments is horrifying. With the jump in crude produced by fracking, the shipment of crude oil by rail has also jumped by thousands of percent. Unsurprisingly, the number of oil train derailments has also accelerated rapidly. So much so that in 2014, more crude oil was spilled in the U.S. from train derailments than in any year since data has been collected.

In just the past week there have been two major oil train accidents in North America. A train derailed in Ontario, Canada — pretty much directly north of Ohio — the night of February 14. Several tank cars caught fire, and the remote location made it difficult for emergency teams to arrive.

Two days later, midday on February 16, another train pulling DOT-111 cars derailed, exploded [Editor: no, they were the “improved” CPC-1232 tank cars], and leaked oil into the Kanawha River amid a snowstorm in West Virginia. At the time of this writing, roughly 15 tanker cars were still burning, hundreds of families have been evacuated from their homes, and two water treatment plants downriver from the spill have been shut down.

The question you have to ask the San Luis Obispo Planning Commission and the Board of Supervisors is this: If an oil train explosion is not currently a serious possibility in our part of North America, why would we do something to change that?

Bakken Crude, Crude By Rail, Derailment, Explosion, Fire

Cleanup, investigation continue at W.Va. derailment site

Repost from The San Francisco Chronicle

Cleanup, investigation continue at W.Va. derailment site

By Pam Ramsey, Associated Press, February 22, 2015 2:19pm

BOOMER, W.Va. (AP) — A full-scale federal investigation of an oil train derailment in southern West Virginia has begun as work continues to remove the overturned tank cars from the site, federal officials said Sunday.

A fire sparked by the Feb. 16 derailment in Mount Carbon prevented investigators from gaining full access to the crash scene until this weekend. Foul winter weather also has hampered the investigation. As of Sunday, some cars had been removed from the site but many remained.

“The folks at the site of the derailment are making a lot of progress. It has absolutely been difficult. It is a great testament to them that we have no one injured up there despite the ice and snow, the cold and dampness,” Sarah Feinberg, acting administrator of the Federal Railroad Administration Administrator, said Sunday in a telephone interview with The Associated Press.

Investigators have not determined what caused 27 cars of the 109-car CSX train to go off the tracks during a snowstorm. Feinberg said the investigation is in an early stage and the railroad agency will examine all elements, including weather, the track and the operation of the train.

“Some of the things we want to look are still under the cars in the pileup,” Robert Lauby, the railroad agency’s chief safety officer, told The AP.

Investigators have reviewed video from cameras on the locomotives’ front and rear, along with video from another train that passed the CSX train minutes before the derailment. The train’s data recorder also has been recovered.

“Now we can begin work on the forensic investigation,” Feinberg said.

The investigation will include inspecting the damaged tank cars, recovering damaged rail and reviewing maintenance and inspection records, the U.S. Department of Transportation said Sunday in a news release.

The oil involved in the derailment is being tested by the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration to determine its gas content, volatility and tank car performance. Investigators also want to determine whether the oil’s classification complied with federal hazardous material regulations, the DOT said.

Derailment investigations can take several days to a couple of weeks, Feinberg said.

The train was carrying 3 million gallons of North Dakota crude when it derailed. As of Sunday afternoon, response teams had recovered 152,000 gallons from tank cars, multiple agencies responding to the derailment said in a news release.

“Some cars still have to be righted,” Skip Elliott, CSX vice president of public safety, health and environment said Sunday at a multiagency media briefing in Boomer, across the Kanawha River from the derailment site.

The derailment shot fireballs into the sky, leaked oil into a Kanawha River tributary, burned down a house nearby and forced nearby water treatment plants to temporarily shut down. Containment booms have been deployed to lessen the environmental impact.

A small amount of oil was detected in the river. Water and air monitoring in the area is continuing, Dennis Matlock, on-scene coordinator for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, said at the briefing.

Crude By Rail

Martinez Environmental Group: It’s happened again & again

Repost from The Martinez News-Gazette

Martinez Environmental Group: It’s happened again & again

By Guy Cooper, February 22, 2015

Two more oil train wrecks in the space of two days.

On Saturday, Feb. 14, a 100-car train carrying diluted bitumen from the tar sands of Alberta derailed in a remote area of northern Ontario, Canada. Fifteen cars dumped their cargo, and seven burned. Emergency responders have to wait for the flammable components to burn off before even beginning to clean up the mess. Toxic solids have blackened the snow and contaminated the soil. Ash deposits on the forest are expected to result in a widespread tree die off. Tar sands are poised to poison water ways the locals depend upon. Clean up is expected to take some time, but the rail line was repaired and open for business within four days.

The cause of the derailment has yet to be determined. The tanker cars were the newly upgraded CPC1232s designed to resist the catastrophic failures of the old DOT111s. Both the train and the tracks had passed safety inspections shortly before the accident. Thankfully, no one was injured.

Then two days later a 100-car train full of volatile Bakken crude derailed, ruptured and exploded in huge fireballs on the banks of a river between the small towns of Powelltown Hollow and Boomer, West Virginia. One house was incinerated. Oil laden cars rolled into the water, just upstream from intakes to the local water treatment plant, which was urgently shut down to avoid any toxic contamination. Evacuations ensued. Some reportedly ran for their lives from under the towering orange/black mushroom clouds, barefoot through the snow that was blanketing the area at the time. All the fire fighters could do was watch it burn. It’s still burning two days later. Miraculously, the only injury was to the owner of the house that was destroyed, he having suffered from inhalation.

Again, the cause of the accident is yet to be determined. Again, the train and the tracks had just passed safety inspections. Again, the tanker cars were the newer, supposedly more robust CPC1232s. And again, I suspect the railroad will quickly get that line ready to resume carrying oil trains.

How often does this have to happen before the federal government puts a stop to it? The West Virginia incident occurred on the same line, en route to the same destination as a train that derailed, exploded and spilled toxic crude from the same “improved” tankers into the James River at Lynchburg, Virginia, just last April. Meanwhile, federal regulators continue to tangle over tighter restrictions with oil industry and rail company reps who are themselves at odds over who should be financially responsible for ensuring safe transport of these fuel stocks. The whole process is estimated to enfold over the next 20 years.

Twenty years! At the rate we’re piling up oil train catastrophes, I suggest Martinez doesn’t have 20 years. The odds are not looking good. I remind you that we already have one of these 100-car bomb trains traversing the Alhambra trestle about once a week. If all the refineries have their way, we could see a further five or six of these oil laden trains rolling through our downtown on the Union Pacific tracks every week by next year. It is not OK to continue business as usual until such time someone might devise a safer strategy and figure out who’s going to pay for it. It’s time to stop. Now.

P.S. – According to Christin Ayers of KPIX (Feb. 18, 2015), Kinder Morgan stopped receiving Bakken bomber trains the end of November due to the drop in oil prices. This information apparently came from the Richmond fire chief. He does not expect this market-driven cessation to be permanent and is still seeking additional funding for needed firefighter training related to potential oil train emergencies. So for now Martinez is safe, but not forever. Efforts must continue at the federal, state and local levels to prevent the resumption of this dangerous oil train traffic through our communities.

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.