All posts by Roger Straw

Editor, owner, publisher of The Benicia Independent
Crude By Rail, Emergency Readiness & Response, Fire, Funding for emergency response, Insurance and liability, Risk Assessment

Once in 111 years? Could be tomorrow…

Repost from The Vacaville Reporter
[Editor: The author convincingly makes the case that when it comes to oil trains, public safety is a roll of the dice.  He then suggests that the only way to win at crude oil craps is to buy insurance and prepare for the inevitable disaster(s).  In his next column, maybe Mr. Kimme will consider a statistically proven casino strategy: don’t play the game.  NOW is the time to say NO to big oil, and to promote, develop, plan for and build clean energy.  – RS]

The odds are, tanker safety needs to be discussed

By Vacaville Reporter columnist Ernest Kimme, 09/22/2014

Many people in Vacaville live in flood plains, and pay flood insurance. The city keeps the flood maps. They show the 50 year flood zones, 100 year flood zones, and 500 year flood zones.

People often believe that means that houses in a 50 year flood zone will flood once every 50 years. If you have a flood, then the next flood will be in 50 years. Sadly, this is incorrect.

Instead, every year, nature rolls a 50 sided dice. If the dice stops with “50” showing, your house gets flooded. If you are lucky, you could roll 100 times (once a year), and never see a “50”. But if you’re not lucky, you might get “50” twice in a row. Or three times in 10 years. Probability is a fickle mistress. You might know the odds, but you just never know what is going to happen each year.

So now let’s talk about train wrecks and oil fires.

The Valero Refinery in Benicia would like to import a lot of oil by train. The trains would start in Roseville, and travel 69 miles to the Benicia Refinery. Part of that journey would be in the Suisun Marsh. Several long trains of tanker cars would make the trip each day. So people have concerns.

Some bright mathematician calculated the odds of a derailment leading to a fire. Without going into the math (your welcome), he found that the odds of a train wreck and oil fire in Solano County were once in 111 years. So every year, the lords of chaos roll a 111 sided dice, and if it comes up “111,” then that year Solano County has a terrible oil fire on the railroad tracks. The fire might not happen for 200 years, or we could have 3 fires in 3 consecutive years. It’s all luck.

For comparison, Vacaville has about 6 to 8 house fires a year. The odds of one particular house — your house — burning are about 1 in 3,500. Take a dice with 3,500 sides you get the idea. Yet we still faithfully pay for fire insurance, and pay taxes for a fire department.

Now, go back and look at the chances of a train wreck, and the chances of a house fire. Did you notice that train wrecks are more likely than house fires?

But let’s not let our knickers get all twisted up — yet. Just like a house fire, oil tanker fires are not likely to happen. We should, however be prepared. We would like the fire department to be able to put them out quickly, if and when they happen.

That’s the rub. Oil fires do not quietly flicker out. They give off big clouds of toxic smoke, often with heavy metals and sulfuric acid in them.

Oil fires burn so hot that firefighters often have trouble getting close. And oil fires need special foams and equipment. Water just spreads it out and makes it worse.

So the obvious question is: Who pays for the extra training for the firefighters and the special equipment? The taxpayers? The refinery? The railroad?

Normally the taxpayers have to pay, and then file claims after the accident in an attempt to recover costs. Usually the railroads carry insurance in case of accidents, so it becomes lawyers arguing with lawyers. Makes you wonder: What if the county got insurance to cover their costs?

We can regret the need for oil and gasoline in our society, and we should make every effort to use less fossil fuel. But until that day, we need to safely transport oil and gasoline. With that in mind, Supervisor Linda Seifert is hosting a community discussion on the tanker trains and safety, Monday, Sept. 29, 6 to 8:30 p.m., in the Supervisor’s Chambers, 675 Texas St, Fairfield. For more information, call her office.

The author is a Vacaville resident and member of The Reporter editorial board.

Crude By Rail, Oil Industry, Oil stabilization, State regulation, Volatility

North Dakota oil reps say Bakken does not need more regulation

Repost from AP in The San Francisco Chronicle
[Editor: To paraphrase, ‘Bakken is no more volatile, we are already conditioning it, it would cost too much.’  …well, what did we expect them to say?  – RS]

Oil reps say ND has proper rail shipment rules

By James MacPherson, Associated Press, September 23, 2014
FILE - In this June 5, 2012 file photo provided by Rangeland Energy, LLC, a train leaves the company's crude oil loading terminal near Epping, ND. Oil industry representatives told North Dakota regulators Tuesday, Sept. 23, 2014, that the state has proper regulations in place to treat Bakken crude for shipment by rail. North Dakota's Industrial Commission is considering new rules that would remove extra hydrocarbons from Bakken crude, a process some say might make the oil more safe for rail transport. Bakken crude has been linked to fiery oil train crashes like one outside Casselton, N.D., last December that left an ominous cloud over the town and led some residents to evacuate. Photo: Courtesy Of Rangeland Energy, LLC, AP / Rangeland Energy, LLC
In this June 5, 2012 file photo provided by Rangeland Energy, LLC, a train leaves the company’s crude oil loading terminal near Epping, ND. Oil industry representatives told North Dakota regulators Tuesday, Sept. 23, 2014, that the state has proper regulations in place to treat Bakken crude for shipment by rail. North Dakota’s Industrial Commission is considering new rules that would remove extra hydrocarbons from Bakken crude, a process some say might make the oil more safe for rail transport. Bakken crude has been linked to fiery oil train crashes like one outside Casselton, N.D., last December that left an ominous cloud over the town and led some residents to evacuate. | Photo: Courtesy Of Rangeland Energy, LLC, AP

BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — Oil producers in North Dakota are objecting to any new state regulations that would require them to reduce the volatility of crude before it’s loaded onto rail cars.

North Dakota’s Industrial Commission is considering new rules that would require companies to remove certain liquids and gasses from crude oil train shipments, a process some say would make such transport safer. But oil industry officials told the commission Tuesday that the state already has proper regulations in place.

“To date, no evidence has been presented to suggest that measureable safety improvements would result from processes beyond current oil conditioning,” Hess Corp. spokesman Brent Lohnes said.

Oil trains in the U.S. and Canada were involved in at least 10 major accidents during the last 18 months, including an explosion in Lac-Megantic, Quebec, that killed 47. Other trains carrying Bakken crude have since derailed and caught fire in Alabama, Virginia, North Dakota.

But Kari Cutting, vice president of the North Dakota Petroleum Council, said nine of the incidents involved derailments and one was due to a leaky valve.

“The material contained in these railcars was not the cause,” Cutting said.

A federal report released earlier this year by the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Administration says oil from North Dakota’s prolific Bakken formation may be more flammable than other crudes. But a report funded by the North Dakota Petroleum Council says Bakken oil is no more dangerous to transport by rail than other crudes and fuels.

Oil from North Dakota began being shipped by trains in 2008 when the state reached capacity for pipeline shipments. The state is now the nation’s No. 2 oil producer, behind Texas.

Cutting, whose group represents more than 500 companies working in North Dakota’s oil patch, said the each of the more than 11,000 oil wells in the state already has equipment in place to stabilize or condition the oil before shipment.

“Requiring stabilization beyond current conditioning practices would be a costly, redundant process that would not yield any additional safety benefits,” she said.

Industry officials also pointed out that stripping liquids and gases from Bakken crude would result in even-more volatile products that would still have to be shipped by rail.

Outside the Bismarck building where the commission was meeting, members of an environmental-minded landowner group hoisted a large banner that read, “Stop Bomb Trains, Stabilize Bakken Crude.”

Theodora Bird Bear of Mandaree, a spokeswoman for the Dakota Resource Council, told reporters that oil companies are cutting corners to boost their bottoms lines.

“When they talk about saving money, what they are really talking about is reducing public safety,” Bird Bear said.

Members of the group said the issue of safer Bakken oil goes well beyond North Dakota’s border.

“No one in this country feels safe around these rail lines,” Scott Skokos said.

Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton on Tuesday sent a letter to Gov. Jack Dalrymple, asking for additional safety measures for oil trains leaving North Dakota.

Alison Ritter, a spokeswoman for the regulatory panel, said a decision on whether to change state rules could come within 90 days.

Air Quality, Climate Change

UN summit: Businesses and investors pressing for green policy

Repost from The Associated Press

Businesses and investors pressing for green policy

By Johathan Fahey, AP Energy Writer, September 22, 2014
AP Photo
In this Saturday, Jan. 10, 2009, file photo, a flock of geese fly past a smokestack at the Jeffery Energy Center coal power plant near Emmitt, Kan. Hundreds of corporations, insurance companies and pension funds are calling on world leaders gathering for a U.N. summit on climate change this week to attack the problem by making it more costly for businesses to pollute. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel, File)

NEW YORK (AP) — Hundreds of corporations, insurance companies and pension funds are calling on world leaders gathering for a U.N. summit on climate change this week to attack the problem by making it more costly for businesses and ordinary people to pollute.

The idea, long advocated by policymakers, economists and environmental activists, is that the world can’t hope to slow the heating of the planet until its cost is incorporated into the everyday activities that contribute to it, such as using gas- or coal-generated electricity, driving a car, shipping a package or flying around the globe.

Business leaders representing trillions of dollars in revenue and retirement savings say they worry that global warming threatens the long-term value of their investments, and they want world leaders to adopt policies that would provide a financial incentive to people to clean up their act.

That could include a tax on carbon emissions, a cap or some other mechanism.

“There’s a market failure that needs to be fixed,” said Anne Simpson, senior portfolio manager and director of global governance at the $300 billion California Public Employees’ Retirement System, the largest public pension fund in the U.S.

Despite a broad consensus that something needs to be done, it has been impossible so far for global leaders to agree on how to implement what amounts to a price on pollution, because energy is so important for economic growth.

“It may be easier to get large businesses to agree that something should be done than to get them to coalesce around specific policy measures,” said Michael Levi, senior fellow for energy and the environment at the Council on Foreign Relations.

At Tuesday’s U.N. summit, 120 world leaders will try to summon some of the considerable political will required if a new climate treaty is to be reached at international negotiations next year in Paris. The one-day summit is part of U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s push to help world leaders to reach a goal they set in 2009: prevent Earth’s temperature from rising more than 2 degrees Fahrenheit (1.1 degrees Celsius) from where it is now.

On Sunday, scientists announced that the world set another record last year for the amount of carbon pollution spewed into the atmosphere.

Ahead of the summit, business leaders such as Apple’s Tim Cook renewed or expanded pledges to help the planet by running their businesses more efficiently, investing in renewable energy or pulling their investments from fossil fuel companies.

Last week, CalPERS and other big asset-holders such as the insurance and financial firms Allianz, BlackRock and AXA Group called for a “meaningful” price on carbon emissions. The World Bank said Monday that 73 countries and more than 1,000 companies have expressed their support for a price on carbon.

Also on Monday, a parade of business and political leaders tried to rally support in a series of speeches in New York.

“It doesn’t cost more to deal with climate change; it costs more to ignore it,” said Secretary of State John Kerry.

Cook said customers care about the planet and will “vote with their dollars” for sustainably produced products. He outlined the steps Apple is taking to reduce the carbon emissions of its products and its supply chain, and called for broader action.

“The long-term consequences of not addressing climate change are huge,” he said. “I don’t think anyone can overstate that.”

While many insist a transition to a cleaner economy can boost economic growth or at least not harm it, many worry it would slow the global economy and make it more difficult for people in developing nations to get access to even basic electricity and transportation. Even those who agree that the transition must take place can’t agree on how to do it.

The International Energy Agency estimates that $1 trillion per year must be invested through 2050 in clean energy in order to keep global temperatures from rising past a level that scientists consider especially dangerous.

Charging a price for carbon emissions could prod polluters to change their ways by making it in their financial self-interest to do so. It would make fossil fuel investments less profitable and therefore less attractive. And it would make clean energy more lucrative.

A host of new investment vehicles are already making it easier for investors and others to sink their money into renewable projects. The market for so-called green bonds – tax-free bonds that fund clean energy, energy efficiency or other sustainable projects – is expected to at least double to $20 billion this year, for example.

Last week the $188 billion California Teachers’ Retirement System announced its intention to boost its investment in clean energy and technology to $3.7 billion from $1.4 billion over the next five years and said that could rise to $9.5 billion with changes in policy. Warren Buffet has said he is looking to double his $15 billion in investments in wind and solar projects.

On another front, a group of activists is calling on foundations and endowments to reduce or eliminate investments in fossil fuel-related companies and direct that money toward clean energy. The group, the Divest-Invest Coalition, said Monday that foundations representing $50 billion in assets have signed on, though the fossil-fuel investments in those portfolios are a very small percentage of the total.

Despite these signs, annual global investment in clean energy is only a quarter of what the IEA estimates is required.

“We’re moving tens or even hundreds of billions, but we’re looking at a $1 trillion every year, and if we’re looking at $1 trillion, we need policy,” said David Pitt-Watson, chairman of the U.N. Environment Program’s Finance Initiative.

Crude By Rail, DOT-111, Emergency Readiness & Response, Oil spill, Rail inspection, Tank car design

May 9 derailment in Colorado: TV news expose

Repost from KDVR Fox31 Denver
[Editor: This investigative report details a May 9,  2014 derailment and a previous derailment in the exact same location, highly toxic benzene contamination of groundwater and slow notification of local first responders by Union Pacific.  (Apologies for the video’s commercial content.)  – RS] 

Derailed: Railroad delays first responders on riverside oil spill

September 22, 2014, by Chris Halsne

DENVER — FOX31 Denver has confirmed a May 9 crude oil train car derailment near LaSalle, Colorado polluted area groundwater with toxic levels of benzene.

Environmental Protection Agency records from July show benzene measurements as high as 144 parts per billion near the crash site. Five parts per billion is considered the safe limit.

Federal accident records also show six Union Pacific tankers ripped apart from the train and flipped into a ditch due to a “track misalignment caused by a soft roadbed.” One of the tankers cracked and spilled approximately7,000 gallons of Niobrara crude, according to the EPA.

FOX31 Denver’s investigative team also confirmed the oil car accident location, only about 75 yards from the South Platte River, is in the same spot as another Union Pacific derailment four years ago.

Reports show four rail cars full of wheat/grain derailed in October 2010. The cause of that accident was very similar: “roadbed settled or soft” and “other rail and joint bar defects.”

“They did have a derailment at the exact same point. I mean within feet!” witness Glenn Werning, a nearby farmer and local water supervisor, told FOX31 Denver investigative reporter Chris Halsne.

Werning wonders if Union Pacific was negligent in repairing the area after the first crash telling Halsne, “It would have been devastating if it had gotten into the water and flowed down. It would have been, whew! The oil spill would have been a mess to clean up because it would have been on both sides of the river for miles.”

Union Pacific declined FOX31 Denver’s repeated requests for an on-camera interview, but a spokesperson, Mark Davis, sent a statement which says in part:

“The line where the derailment occurred is visually inspected one time per week. The maximum speed limit on the line is 20 mph.  Prior to the derailment the track was visually inspected on April 26, April 28, May 1 and May 5 with no exceptions taken. Our track team visually inspects about 15,500 miles of track daily on our 32,000 mile network in 23 states – this translates into 5.7 million miles annually of visional track inspections.”

There is currently no way to double-check the accuracy or completeness of Union Pacific’s statement because private railroads are allowed to conduct their own safety inspections and keep such records private.

Federal law only allows the Federal Railroad Administration to audit railroad inspections to make sure “the owner of the track” is conducting them appropriately.

However, at least in Colorado, that has not been done for at least three years.

FOX31 Denver’s investigative team sent Freedom of Information Act requests asking how often the FRA audited private railroad safety inspections in Colorado. The answer: From January 1, 2012 to March, 2014 is zero.

San Francisco-based Environmental Attorney and Sierra Club activist, Devorah Ancel, says the fact that private railroads conduct their own rail line and rail car safety inspections with very little federal oversight is a growing problem.

Ancel told FOX31 Denver, “The rail industry wants to get as much of this crude to market as quickly as possible. The more the federal government cracks down on safety standards, inspections, on audits, the more they are going to push back because it`s going to affect their bottom line.”

Ancel is part of a group also pressing the Department of Transportation for improvements in the design of hazardous liquid-carrying rail cars. Currently most crude oil travels across tracks in older-model containers called DOT 111’s.

According to federal authorities, the Union Pacific oil tanker which rolled, cracked and then spewed thousands of gallons of crude onto the ground in May’s accident is considered a DOT 111 design.

“This is extremely volatile crude. The tank cars have thin shells. They have thin head shields that are known to puncture during derailment. They have valves that sheer off and puncture during derailment,” Ancel says.

As if multiple derailments in the same place, unverified safety inspections, and outdated oil tanker containers were not enough of a reason for public concern, FOX31 Denver also discovered that Union Pacific officials are being accused of delaying telling local emergency responders about the latest oil car derailment.

According to Weld County Emergency Manager Roy Rudisill, Union Pacific first rallied its own crews to the scene before putting local firefighters in the loop.

Halsne asked, “Were they a little late to let you know?” Rudisill answered, “In my opinion, yes!”

We checked. According to a federal report, the accident happened at around 8 a.m. on May 9.

FOX31 Denver pulled call logs surrounding the accident and found Union Pacific first notified the state Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management at 9:10 am.

Radio traffic shows Weld County fire crews and emergency managers were still scrambling another hour later, trying to figure out exactly where the accident had occurred and whether oil was leaking into the South Platte River.

Rudisill told FOX31 Denver, “A quicker phone call, quicker communication, faster communication to local jurisdiction would have been prudent in my opinion. Now we’ve had two incidents out there. What can we do to make sure the proper actions are taking place so we don’t have another one?”

Werning hates to lay blame entirely on Union Pacific admitting “accidents do happen,” but he`s closely watching their latest track repair efforts, never again wanting to count on “pure luck” as a disaster prevention plan.

“Had they perhaps done a better repair (after the first derailment), they wouldn`t have dropped those cars,” Werning said.

The Environmental Protection Agency said it continues to monitor the groundwater contamination issue. Monitoring wells have been installed in the area surrounding the oil spill. Benzene is a common chemical in oil and gasoline and it does naturally dissipate over time.