Air Quality, Bakken Crude, Crude By Rail, Draft EIR, Noise pollution, Positive Train Control, Risk Assessment, Take Action, Tar sands crude, Valero Benicia Refinery, Volatile gases

Lynne Nittler of Davis, CA: Take Action!

Repost from The Davis Enterprise

Exercise the power of public comment

by Lynne Nittler, August 10, 2014
oil train
Oil tanker cars travel by rail through Davis on a recent evening. Valero oil refinery in Benicia wants to expand its oil shipments to 100 tank cars per day. Jean Jackman/Courtesy photo

The story of crude-by-rail in California is not a done deal. As new developments unfold almost daily in this remarkable drama, it is clear that public input can make a significant impact.

For example, last January, fierce community opposition — plus a letter from state Attorney General Kamala Harris urging further scrutiny on air quality and the risk of accidental spills — led city leaders in Pittsburg to reopen the public comment period on its draft environmental documents.

The WesPac Petroleum project had called for an average of 242,000 barrels of crude — the equivalent of 3.5 trains per day — to be unloaded daily and stored in 16 tanks before being piped to the five Bay Area refineries. Now, it appears WesPac may never reapply. An alert public can bring about change.

Valero in Benicia is a long way from giving up on the rail terminal that will allow it to import 100 tank cars of crude by rail daily, most likely from the tar sands of Alberta, Canada, and the Bakken Crude shale of North Dakota. These two extreme forms of crude — Bakken crude is highly volatile and proven explosive and tar sands bitumen is toxic and impossible to clean up in a spill (Kalamazoo spill, July 2010) — are already being processed in some Bay Area refineries.

The California Energy Commission predicts within two years that California will receive 25 percent of its crude by rail, mostly from these two extreme crudes that emergency workers currently are not prepared to deal with in the event of a spill or accident. For the Sacramento region, that will mean five to six trains of 100 cars per day by the end of 2016!

Your input now may make a significant difference. The draft environmental impact report for the Valero proposal is open for public review until Sept. 15. A printed copy is at the Stephens Branch Library, 315 E. 14th St. in Davis, and is available online at www.benindy.wpengine.com. Every letter submitted becomes part of the public record and must be addressed in the final EIR.

Frankly, the draft EIR focuses on impacts to Benicia, and just glances at uprail communities like Davis. But two 50-car trains coming across the Yolo Causeway and the protected Yolo Basin Wildlife Area; passing high-tech businesses along Second Street; rolling into town through residential neighborhoods, where the vibrations will be felt from each heavy car; following the unusual and therefore dangerous 10 mph crossover just before the train station; passing through the train station, putting the entire downtown within the blast zone; and skirting the edge of UC Davis, including the Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts; puts many people at serious risk.

If you have concerns such as whether the tank cars are safe enough, whether the volatility of the Bakken crude should be reduced before it is loaded into tank cars, who is liable in the event of an accident, whether the trains will be equipped with positive train control to improve braking, how Valero plans to mitigate the increased air and noise pollution, how Valero can claim that accidents happen only once in 111 years, etc., then you can help.

While our city of Davis, Yolo County, Sacramento, Roseville, Fairfield, the Sacramento Area Council of Governments and the Sierra Club Yolano Group are writing their own responses to the Valero draft EIR, letters from private citizens are equally powerful.

Public workshops are planned in August and September to help residents craft their letters. They workshops will provide background on the oil train situation, discuss the California Environmental Quality Act and EIR process and offer helpful resource materials. Participants will find topics, gather evidence, write their letters and then share drafts for feedback.

Workshops are planned from 10 a.m. to noon Saturday, Aug. 9; 7 to 9 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 21; and 2 to 4 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 7. All will take place in the Blanchard Room at the Stephens Branch Library, 315 E. 14th St. in Davis. The room is accessible to people with disabilities.

The draft EIR and mailing directions are posted at www.benindy.wpengine.com. For more information, contact me at lnittler@sbcgloball.net or 530-756-8110.

Bring a friend! Every letter adds to the impact!

— Lynne Nittler is a Davis resident.

Emergency Readiness & Response, Insurance Industry, Tank car design, Tank car retrofit

Ca-ching: Oil-by-rail surge to benefit three commercial sectors

Repost from Benzinga
[Editor: Quick & dirty on the 3 sectors: Freight Car Designers And Refitters, Insurance Providers, and Emergency Services And Safety Training.  UNLESS … if we stop crude by rail in its tracks, the only CA-CHING will be in the alternative energy fields.  – RS] 

3 Sectors Expected To Benefit From The Oil-By-Rail Surge

Bruce Kennedy, Benzinga Staff Writer, August 11, 2014

It’s been just over a year since a freight train carrying crude oil from the Bakken shale fields in North Dakota derailed and exploded in a Quebec town near the U.S.-Canadian border, killing 47 people.

That accident, along with several others in its wake, drew attention to the enormous increase in shale oil now being transported from North Dakota and Canada by rail – and the vulnerabilities of that form of transport.

“More crude oil is being shipped by rail than ever before, with much of it being transported out of North Dakota’s Bakken Shale Formation,” Department of Transportation Secretary Anthony Fox pointed out in a press conference last month. “In 2008, producers shipped 9,500 rail-carloads of oil in the U.S.; by just last year, that number skyrocketed to 415,000 rail-carloads — a jump of more than 4,300 percent.”

At that same press conference, Fox announced a rule-making proposal to improve the safe transportation of large quantities of flammable materials by rail – crude oil and ethanol in particular.

The increase in oil being transported by rail, as well as the new safety measures, might also be a windfall for companies in some related fields.

Freight Car Designers And Refitters

The proposed new safety rules for oil freight cars means a potential bonanza for firms like The Greenbrier Companies (NYSE: GBX). The Oregon-based group is a leading manufacturer and marketer of railroad freight car equipment in both North America and Europe.

Along with retro-fitting existing oil rail cars, Greenbrier is also designing a new genreration “Tank Car of the Future,”  with a thicker tank and bigger welds to ensure greater safety.

The new design, according to the Rigzone oil and gas industry web site, is “intended to meet anticipated new industry and government standards for tank cars transporting certain hazardous material.”

Insurance Providers

The Wall Street Journal reports that most, big North American railroads usually carry about $1.5 billion in liability insurance – but notes that accidents like last year’s deadly derailment and explosion in Lac-Mégantic, Quebec, can end up costing billions of dollars more in cost, especially if that accident happens in a populated area.

“Even if it happens outside of town, the massive damage to property and the environment — you’re stymied when you have these kind of crude oil fires burning hot and big for days,” Karen Darch, president of Barrington, Illinois, told the newspaper.

This could lead to an increase in the need for insurance.

“With experts predicting that oil spill derailments may increase in frequency over the next decade, the insurance industry must be prepared to address this new coverage threat,” says the law industry tracker web site Law360 earlier this year, “including the coverage issues and potential exposure which may arise from these disasters.”

Emergency Services And Safety Training

Earlier this year, Minnesota’s state legislature passed an oil transport law. The measure, reportedly worth more than $6 million, took fees generated in part from oil and railroad companies and put that funding towards tanker and pipeline disaster training, as well as more state transportation safety inspectors.

As former National Transportation Safety Board Chairwoman Deborah Hersman pointed out in a letter written this past January to the head of the Federal Railroad Administration, there is no mandate for the railroads to come up with comprehensive disaster response plans for oil train derailments

This means the rail carriers “have effectively placed the burden of remediating the environmental consequences of an accident on local communities along their routes,” the letter said.

According to the Association of American Railroads, the industry is providing $5 million to develop and fund specialized training for first responders handling a crude-by-rail accident, as well as developing “an inventory of emergency response resources and equipment for responding to the release of large amounts of crude oil along routes over which trains with 20 or more cars of crude oil operate.”

Farming, Rail industry

Farmers Union Calls Ability to Deliver Grain Shipments by Rail at Harvest ‘Substantially Inadequate’

Repost from National Farmers Union
[Editor: This media alert does not name the massive expansion of crude by rail shipments in the upper Midwest as the cause for lack of rail cars for shipping farm commodities, but there is little doubt this is the problem.  – RS]

August 6, 2014
Contact: David Thews, 202-554-1600,  dthews@nfudc.org
NFU Calls Ability to Deliver Grain Shipments by Rail at Harvest ‘Substantially Inadequate’
Warns Surface Transportation Board Farmers May Be Forced to Dump Grain

WASHINGTON (August 6, 2014) – National Farmers Union (NFU) President Roger Johnson warned the Surface Transportation Board (STB) that BNSF Railway (BNSF) and Canadian Pacific (CP)’s ability to deliver grain and ethanol at harvest are “substantially inadequate” and are resulting in farmers piling grain on the ground because of lack of transportation options.

“We are especially concerned regarding wheat, since harvest has already started and grain remains in the bin from last year’s harvest,” noted Johnson in a letter today to the STB chairman and vice chairman.  “While BNSF claims that the total number of late shipments of wheat has declined nationwide, 95.42 percent of all past due cars are concentrated in Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota and Minnesota. BNSF has promised to improve their performance, but we are still subject to delays and Average Train Speed at year-long lows,” the letter notes.

“Grain shipments in North Dakota are critical,” said Johnson.   BNSF reported in its latest weekly update that there have been 2,399 delayed rail cars with an average delay of 23.6 days. CP reported 22,457 open requests with an average of 11.71 weeks.   The letter cites anecdotal evidence from four different grain elevators indicating that their oldest orders are from early March and shuttle orders are up to 2,000 cars behind. “These numbers are staggering and simply unacceptable,” he said.

Johnson notes that in South Dakota, NFU members are hearing about significant delays directly from local grain elevators across the state. At one particular elevator that handles 15 million bushels of grain per year, 3 million of those bushels will not move before this year’s harvest.  “Due to the backlog, farmers are now dumping wheat on the ground because the elevators will not take on the increased liability,” he said.

Johnson also voiced his concern about the ethanol industry, which relies heavily on rail for transportation.  “While the June 20 decision rightfully addressed grain shipments, we encourage STB to consider shipments of ethanol as a priority as well,” he said.  “Failure to bring ethanol to market will hurt consumers because of higher gasoline prices, and will work against our efforts to offset imports of foreign oil.”

A full copy of the letter is here.

National Farmers Union has been working since 1902 to protect and enhance the economic well-being and quality of life for family farmers, ranchers and rural communities through advocating grassroots-driven policy positions adopted by its membership.

-30-

Bakken Shale, Coal, Crude By Rail, Farming

Crude by rail causing delays for rail shipments of other goods

Repost from The Wall Street Journal
[Editor: We missed this significant article from last March.  Also on the delays of farming shipments, see the Reuters report of April 15, 2014: Farmers: Oil trains may delay fertilizer shipments.  – R]

Surge in Rail Shipments of Oil Sidetracks Other Industries

Pileups at BNSF Railway Is Causing Delays for Shippers of Goods Ranging From Coal to Sugar
By Betsy Morris, Jacob Bunge and John W. Miller, March 13, 2014
A train carrying crude oil heads west through the small town of Shelby, Mont., in November. A major snarl in railroad traffic is ricocheting through the supply chains of businesses across the U.S. AP

A major snarl in railroad traffic is ricocheting through the supply chains of businesses across the U.S., causing delays and losses for shippers of goods ranging from coal to sugar.

Many of the problems stem from pileups at BNSF Railway Co. in a critical northern stretch of the country where it is shipping crude oil from North Dakota’s booming Bakken Shale region. The railroad, one of the biggest in North America, was already taxed by the heavy demand for oil transport. But its difficulties multiplied when it ran out of locomotives and crew, as a bitter winter forced it to use smaller trains.

That has caused a ripple effect across the country as shipments have been delayed. Deliveries of empty grain cars to farmers and grain elevators in the Midwest and Great Plains are running about two to three weeks late, the railroad says. The chief of a major sugar producer said he likes to load 50 railcars a day this time of year, but BNSF sometimes brings more than 50 and sometimes 30.

An executive close to big utility companies says coal-fired power plant inventories are running much lower than the usual 30 days. “The railroads tell us they aren’t serving power plants until their inventories are in single-digit days,” he said.

BNSF isn’t the only railroad with capacity problems, but its woes have been aggravated by a big grain harvest and its surging crude business.

The railroad knew it was in trouble when winter hit. “We found ourselves behind the curve,” said Bob Lease, vice president, service design and performance, for BNSF. “Now, we are finding we can’t fill all of the demand” as quickly as usual.

The backlogs could wind up costing shippers hundreds of millions of dollars, says Steve Sharp, president of Consumers United for Rail Equity, a group representing agriculture companies, manufacturers and utilities. His group has been pushing for tougher railroad regulation.

Andrew Walmsley, director of congressional relations for the American Farm Bureau Federation, a trade group for farmers, worries that continued capacity problems could hurt U.S. competitiveness in the world arena. “Our reliability as a trading partner comes into question anytime we can’t provide the most cost-competitive price in a predictable and timely manner,” he said.

BNSF is scrambling. The railroad is leasing and buying locomotives by the hundreds and hiring new crews. In mid-February it began building new track on top of frozen snow-covered ground along its main oil-patch route. It normally wouldn’t have attempted such a project until spring.

Mr. Lease says traffic should become more “normalized” by April 1, but he concedes that the railroad’s challenges will extend through 2014. “It takes a while to unravel,” he said.

BNSF, a unit of Warren Buffett’s  Berkshire Hathaway Inc.,  BRKB +1.19%     invented the business of carrying crude oil by rail when it launched its first long oil train, essentially a rolling pipeline, in 2009. The business has sharply exceeded its expectations. Shipments of crude by rail from North Dakota rocketed to a peak of 800,000 barrels a day last October from fewer than 100,000 barrels a day in 2010.

The surge has contributed to a tangle with potentially widespread impact. Larry Stranghoener, chief financial officer of fertilizer maker  Mosaic Co.  MOS +0.73%     , says that transport problems, including the crunch in railroad capacity, could spell “a slower season.”

“The primary preoccupation of our sales force, our supply chain and our customers frankly is getting product to them in time for the spring season,” he told the Minneapolis-area company’s investors Wednesday. Any delays transporting Mosaic’s fertilizer to dealers could cause them to defer additional orders, he said.

Some shippers, eager to move their products, have opted to use trucks. Trucking rates compare with rail costs within a 500-mile radius, but beyond that companies can wind up paying four to five times as much on a per-ton basis, says one shipping official.

At Black Gold Farms, based in Grand Forks, N.D., Chief Executive Gregg Halverson says his company has had to pay more to hire trucks to transport its potatoes, which it sells to chip makers.

“There’s more demand for truck transportation, and that hits us between the eyes,” Mr. Halverson said. “It’s not only the actual availability of the trucks, but trucking firms having trouble getting drivers, because of demand from the oil patch.” He declined to estimate how much more he is paying for trucks.

American Crystal Sugar Co., which says it supplies about 15% of the nation’s sugar, had to slow production at three of its five plants for 11 days in mid-February because it was running out of storage space while waiting for trains to ship its sugar to food companies. That has disrupted the Moorhead, Minn.-based cooperative’s just-in-time delivery system, said David Berg, its chief executive. “The railroad just threw that into complete chaos,” he said.

He said delays in outbound shipments of sugar have interfered with the production schedules of American Crystal’s customers, many of them major food manufacturers.

While he said he wasn’t aware of any food companies that have had to halt production, “They’ve been running on fumes for weeks,” he said. “We’ve been humping trucks all over the U.S. to keep people in supply.” American Crystal supplies  General Mills Inc.,  GIS +1.27%      Kraft Foods Group Inc.,  KRFT +1.30%     Nestlé SA, Mars Inc. and  Kellogg Co.  K +1.09%     , among others.

Mr. Berg and Perry Cerminara, director of global sweetener and energy-risk management at  Hershey Co.  HSY +0.07%     , called the problems caused by BNSF “serious” in a March 4 letter to regulators and stressed the “urgent” need to fix them. Mr. Cerminara wrote on behalf of the Sweetener Users Association, representing food manufacturers.

A spokesman for BNSF said it is working with customers individually to address their most critical issues and plans record spending on expansion this year.

Utilities are hoping railroads can improve their capacity before the busy summer season. “We try to build up inventories to around 40 days, so we’re counting on spring,” said one official at a coal-fired power plant. But, he added, “We’re not counting on a magic bullet.”

—Tony C. Dreibus, Annie Gasparro, Chester Dawson, David George-Cosh and Laura Stevens contributed to this article.

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