Industry opposes proposal for 2-member train crews in light of Lac-Megantic disaster
Joan Lowy, The Associated Press , March 14, 2016 3:51PM EDT
Wrecked oil tankers and debris from a runaway train in Lac-Megantic, Que. are pictured July 8, 2013. (Sûreté du Québec handout via CP)
WASHINGTON — Trains would have to have a minimum of two crew members under rules proposed Monday by U.S. regulators. The move is partly in response to a deadly 2013 crash in which an unattended oil train caught fire and destroyed much of a town in Canada, killing 47 people.
The Federal Railroad Administration is also considering allowing railroads that operate with only one engineer to apply for an exception to the proposed two-person crew rule, according to a notice published in the Federal Regulator.
The proposal is opposed by the Association of American Railroads, which represents major freight railroads. Many railroads currently use two-person crews, but some industry officials have indicated they may switch to one engineer per train once technology designed to prevent many types of accidents caused by human error becomes operational.
Most railroads expect to start using the technology, called positive train control or PTC, between 2018 and 2020. It relies on GPS, wireless radio and computers to monitor train positions and automatically slow or stop trains that are in danger of colliding or derailing.
A 2008 law requires PTC technology on all tracks used by passenger trains or trains that haul liquids that turn into toxic gas when exposed to air by Dec. 31, 2015. After it became clear most railroads wouldn’t make that deadline, Congress passed a bill last fall giving railroads another three to five years to complete the task.
There is “simply no safety case” for requiring two-person crews, Edward Hamberger, president of the railroad association, said in a statement. Single-person crews are widely and safely used in Europe and other parts of the world, he said.
There will be even less need for two-person crews after PTC is operational, he said. PTC “is exactly the kind of safety redundancy through technology for which the (railroad administration) has long advocated,” he said.
But Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat, said two-person crews are needed on trains in the same way it’s necessary to have two-pilot crews on planes.
“The cost of adding a second, skilled crewmember pales in comparison to the costs of avoidable crashes and collisions,” Blumenthal said. It’s important that the railroad administration impose what safety regulations they can now since railroads “have dragged their feet” on implementing PTC, he said.
On July 6, 2013, a 74-car freight train hauling crude oil from the Bakken region of North Dakota that had been left unattended came loose and rolled downhill into Lac-Megantic, a Quebec town not far from the U.S. border. The resulting explosions and fire killed 47 people and razed much the downtown area. The train had one engineer, who had gone to a hotel for the night.
Would Saving A Livable Climate Destroy Buffett’s Fossil Fuel Empire?
By Joe Romm, March 11, 2016 8:00 AM
BNSF oil train derailment in 2013. CREDIT: BRUCE CRUMMY, AP
Billionaire Warren Buffett has bet the future of his company Berkshire Hathaway on dirty energy. In recent years he has been building a vertically-integrated fossil fuel empire — one that develops, delivers, processes, and burns the most climate-destroying fuels.
The final part of this series on Buffett looks at how BNSF Railways is the engine of his carbon-intensive conglomerate, creating a massive risk for shareholders in this increasingly carbon-constrained world — a risk the “Oracle of Omaha” needs to be far more upfront about.
Is Warren Buffett “The Profiteer” of “Climate Killers”?
When Rolling Stone named Warren Buffett one of its 17 “Climate Killers” in 2010, they called him “The Profiteer.” They zeroed in on his recent purchase of “Burlington Northern Santa Fe railroad for $26 billion — the largest acquisition of Buffett’s storied career.”
Why? BNSF is “the nation’s top hauler of coal, shipping some 300 million tons a year.” That is especially convenient for Buffett because, as noted in Part 2, Berkshire Hathaway Energy has four major utilities that still rely on coal for over half their electricity generation.
CREDIT: BNSF
But BNSF is so much more than just the top hauler of coal. As their website proudly attests “BNSF is the largest transporter of crude oil in North America” — and we all know how well the whole crude-by-rail thing has been going.
2015 “has already been the costliest by far for crude train explosions,” BloombergBusiness reported in December. A “BNSF train that derailed and exploded in Illinois” last March “carrying highly explosive crude from North Dakota” created some $5.5 million in damage.
From 2010 through mid-2014, oil shipped by rail in the United States increased from about one million barrels of oil every month to 25 million! At the same time, Canadian imports increased 50-fold, as we’ve reported. BNSF was a driving force behind that explosion.
CREDIT: EIA DATA
Also, last October we learned about “what is believed to be the largest frac sand unit train to date in North America.” You guessed it: “The 150-car unit train, operated by BNSF, carried 16,500 tons of frac sand used in hydraulic fracturing.”
Warren Buffett Bets Big On The Tar Sands
But wait, there’s more. You may recall from Part 1 that last year, the billionaire spent $240 million buying another chunk of Canadian tar sands giant Suncor, upping his overall bet on the climate-destroying liquid fuel to $1.1 billion — a fact Buffett does not share with shareholders in his list of Berkshire Hathaway’s climate risks.
On top of that, as BNSF’s website also proudly attests, the railroad “is positioned to act as a gateway to the Canadian oil sands.” Seriously.
Indeed several years ago, a BNSF employee magazine explained how invested the railway was in all aspects of tar sands (aka bitumen) development. The key point is that “Before bitumen can move through a pipeline to its destination, it must be blended with diluents (diluting agents),” lighter weight hydrocarbons like natural gasoline or butane:
BNSF has been moving single carloads of diluents from U.S. refineries to the Canadian border…. The inbounds are then interchanged with Canadian railroads, then moved to Edmonton, with the final move to the oil sands’ processing center via pipeline.
Last year, BNSF moved about 9,000 carloads of diluents for the project, with the majority of loads originating from the Gulf Coast, California, and Kansas. This year, about 12,000 carloads are anticipated to move.
There’s more: Beyond shipping diluents, “BNSF has also transported turbines, other large machinery and pipes for use at the drilling sites.”
There’s still more to this empire. In 2015, Buffett “nearly doubled Berkshire’s position in Phillips 66,” one of the country’s leading oil (and gas) refiners and processors. The company has 15 refineries which can refine a total of 2.2 million barrels of crude per day.
In January of this year alone, Buffett spent a staggering $832 million to buy yet more Phillips 66 stock. At more than $5 billion, it is his sixth-largest holding. He now owns 14 percent of the “Number 7” company on the Fortune 500 list.
Phillips 66 is a major co-owner of the Wood River Refinery in Illinois, which in recent years made investments “to expand the capacity to handle the bitumen from the Alberta oil sands by nearly 700%.” Also not coincidentally, for the last year, Phillips 66 has been trying to get California planning commissioners to let it build a 1.3-mile rail spur to its Santa Maria refinery. Why? As the Sierra Club explained last month, “The oil giant seeks to transport tar sands crude from Canada in mile-long trains — each laden with over 2 million gallons of dirty crude.”
Both A Livable Climate And Buffett’s Empire Cannot Thrive
Yes, the Oracle of Omaha has a thing for the Canadian tar sands. But more than that, over the last several years he has built a vertically-integrated fossil fuel empire — one that develops, delivers, processes, and even burns the most carbon-intensive fossil fuels. It would be a brilliant strategy except for two small details.
First, climate science makes clear we have to leave most fossil fuels — and virtually all of the most carbon-intensive — in the ground to avoid global catastrophic warming. Second, over the past 18 months, the leading nations of the world unanimously agreed on a plan whose goal is to do just that, and the overwhelming majority of them made detailed pledges to slow or reverse carbon-intensive growth and replace it with carbon-free growth.
The domestic and international coal market has already collapsed as a result of growing environmental concerns and low-cost alternatives including renewables. If the world follows through on its plans to keep total warming below 2°C — a big “if,” for sure — then coal is going to continue to be squeezed out of the market in the coming decades and oil will almost certainly follow the same fate, peaking in demand by 2030, as I discussed last month.
Now whether or not you believe the world is going to achieve the plan it unanimously embraced in Paris in December, surely Buffett ought to at least mention to his shareholders the risks to Berkshire Hathaway if the world does. Yet, his latest annual letter to shareholders dismisses the risk of climate change.
Here is all Buffett says about the coal risk: “To begin with an obvious threat, BNSF, along with other railroads, is certain to lose significant coal volume over the next decade.” But he quickly dismisses this as a problem that is not “crucial to Berkshire’s long-term well-being.”
Last summer, BNSF executive chairman Matthew K. Rose noted the decline in U.S. coal transport and consumption. He said of his company’s major investment to upgrade its rail service to and from the coal-rich Powder River Basin, “That leaves us with millions of dollars in investment in what will eventually be stranded assets.”
Certainly, from a short-term business perspective, investing in oil-by-rail and tar-sands-by-rail to replace coal-by-rail appears to make sense. But what are the risks those investments will eventually become stranded assets, too? Low oil prices aren’t good for crude-by-rail, as BloombergBusiness explained in December. And aggressive climate action, which could well give us peak demand within 15 years, is not bullish for oil prices.
CREDIT: BLOOMBERG
Rather than informing shareholders about any of these risks, Buffett asserts the reverse: “Both BHE [Berkshire Hathaway energy] and BNSF have been leaders in pursuing planet-friendly technology.” Seriously?
I discussed in Part 2 how, despite BHE’s own investments in renewables, BHE is working to crush solar energy in Nevada and around the western United States. And it remains a huge user of coal. And as we’ve seen BNSF is a major deliverer of coal….
But here is how Buffett defends the fairly ludicrous claim that BNSF is somehow one of the “leaders in pursuing planet-friendly technology”:
BNSF, like other Class I railroads, uses only a single gallon of diesel fuel to move a ton of freight almost 500 miles. That makes the railroads four times as fuel-efficient as trucks!
Yes, BNSF is a very fuel-efficient way of delivering vast amounts of climate-destroying fuels to market.
Finally, is it only a coincidence that after outperforming the market for decades, the stock of Berkshire Hathaway has actually underperformed the S&P 500 over the last five years?
Again, if serious global climate action ultimately keeps oil prices low and renders much of the tar sands uneconomic, then Buffett’s carefully constructed fossil fuel empire is going to keep suffering — and deservedly so. After all, leading climate activists have been urging major investors to disinvest in fossil fuels for years. Buffett is doing the exact reverse!
BOTTOM LINE: Between Berkshire Hathaway and a livable climate, only one can thrive. That’s not a tough choice, is it?
Benicia, county to study industrial park’s economic future
By Todd R. Hansen, March 09, 2016
The Valero refinery in operation in Benicia’s Industrial Park. (Daily Republic file)
FAIRFIELD — Smoke stacks and refinery buildings rise up from what was once a military arsenal site, and five decades later, the evolution of what is now the Benicia Industrial Park continues.
“Our industrial park is quite old,” said Jasmin Powell, president of the Benicia Industrial Park Association and head of operations at Dunlop Manufacturing, which has been at the park since 1972.
“So some of the issues that we have been bringing up (as an association) is higher-speed Internet access, which has gotten better over the last couple of years,” Powell said in a phone interview Tuesday. “And our roads are in need of repair.”
The Solano County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday approved a letter of intent for a Collaborative Economic Development Initiative with Benicia, which could eventually create a redevelopment-style district to finance infrastructure improvements at the industrial park.
The city approved the initiative Feb. 23 and has earmarked $25,000 for a feasibility study that will likely come back to the City Council in June or July, Mario Giuliani, the Benicia Economic Development manager, said in a phone interview Monday.
The central focus of the study is the potential value of establishing an Enhanced Infrastructure Financing District to use property tax increments toward improving and building infrastructure at the industrial park.
“Essentially it is another tool . . . for the city to utilize to try to get financing into the industrial park,” Giuliani said. “It is probably the one (option) we are focusing on the most, but that’s not to say that when we do our feasibility study there won’t be other (financing) options.”
In essence, the city would be taking its share of increased property tax in the district area and investing it toward infrastructure. Unlike the defunct redevelopment system, that property does not have to be considered blighted.
Benicia receives 24 cents on each dollar of property tax, money that is typically spread across all general fund uses that include police, fire and city administration, as well as parks and recreation.
Giuliani said one of the things the feasibility study will address is the impact – if any – the loss of tax increments would have on other city services. However, the ultimate goal is that the improvements made would generate even greater tax revenue for all of those services.
“That is a policy decision the City Council will have to make,” Giuliani said.
Also to be determined is whether the county would appropriate its share of the property tax from within the district toward the infrastructure improvements.
Supervisor Linda Seifert, who represents the area, said she will wait and see what the feasibility study shows before deciding what role she would lobby the county to take – including funding options.
“I do have an interest in the county doing what it can to improve (the industrial park),” Seifert said Monday.
Powell said the association has not been part of the city-county discussions, but she was aware such talks were taking place.
On the same night the Benicia council approved the development initiative with the county, it conducted a workshop on a proposed 547-acre mixed-use development within the industrial park.
The Northern Gateway Project, proposed by the Shorts Development Group, targets the same area of the failed Seeno project several years ago. The Shorts Group has a purchasing option on the property. Like the Seeno project, the new proposal does include a residential element.
Seifert said she would not base her decision about county financial support on a specific project, decisions about which she said should be left up to the city and its residents.
The port-oriented industrial park is comprised of 3,000 acres and 7 million square feet of developed space near the junction of Interstates 680 and 780, according to the city’s Office of Economic Development. The park has 450 businesses that employ 6,500 people.
Powell said the park has lost companies because of infrastructure problems, noting specifically Internet access. The city provided about $750,000 for broadband installation in its 2012 budget, and approved $625,000 in a grant/loan program to help park businesses upgrade equipment and buildings.
The law establishing the Enhanced Infrastructure Financing District was signed by Gov. Jerry Brown in September 2014 and went into effect Jan. 1, 2015. It does not include school district shares of property tax.
Derailment: Should rail tracks have fence sensors in landslide prone Niles Canyon?
By Matthias Gafni, Sam Richards and Thomas Peele, 03/08/2016 07:09:45 PM PST
SUNOL — A deep stretch of Niles Canyon where a crowded commuter train from San Jose derailed Monday night is fraught with landslides, yet it lacks a system to alert engineers that their path may be blocked by mud or toppled trees.
But officials — who called it an “absolute miracle” no one was killed — said that may change.
Altamont Commuter Express Spokesman Brian Schmidt said the transit agency, which resumes service Wednesday, will talk with track owner Union Pacific about installing fencing in the area with sensors that set off alerts when hit by trees, mudslides or falling rocks. That is similar to what has been done along the Feather River Canyon in northeastern California and in western Colorado. The sensors have been available but are not widely used, and there are none in the slide-prone Niles Canyon.
An ACE commuter train car that derailed lies in the Alameda Creek along Niles Canyon Road, in Sunol, Calif., Tuesday, March 8, 2016. Authorities said that nine of the more than 200 passengers on the Stockton-bound train were injured, four seriously. (Anda Chu/Bay Area News Group) ( ANDA CHU )
“If there’s any place in the Bay Area to have a landslide, Niles Canyon is it,” said Jonathan Stock, a USGS geologist who has studied the area. “It has a long history of things going bump in the night.”
The first two cars of ACE train No. 10, with 196 passengers aboard, derailed between Sunol and Fremont around 7:15 p.m. Monday, with the lead car tumbling into rain-swollen Alameda Creek. As water filled the partially submerged car, passengers frantically worked to free injured riders.
Nine people were injured. Four of the injuries were serious, though not life-threatening, and one patient — a 24-year-old man — remained hospitalized Tuesday in good condition.
Using two cranes, crews started pulling the submerged lead car out of the creek on Tuesday afternoon, while the other four cars were moved down the track.
Federal Railroad Administration investigators, as well as those from the California Public Utilities Commission and track owner Union Pacific, are involved in the investigation. It was unclear Tuesday whether the landslide broadsided the train as it rolled past at 35 mph, in the 40 mph zone, or if the slide happened beforehand and the train crashed directly into the debris. Other trains went through the canyon earlier Monday and apparently did not report problems.
Christopher Chow, a PUC spokesman, said the agency sent two inspectors to the scene Monday night, and they remained on-site late Tuesday.
“Their focus is on identifying the root cause of the incident and collecting evidence to determine if there were any violations by ACE,” Chow said. “As part of the investigation, we will be reviewing relevant records, including our last inspection of the track.”
FRA accident data identifies 325 train derailments in California between 2011 and 2015. All but eight involved freight trains. Three people were injured, data show. There were no fatalities.
Alameda County Supervisor Scott Haggerty, a member of the ACE board, agreed it’s time to talk about installing slide fences with sensors.
“One thing we can’t ignore is technology, and we have to continue to look at what’s available, and use what’s appropriate,” Haggerty said Tuesday.
Stock reviewed photos of the hillside above the crash site and said it appeared that the unnaturally steep slope created when the line was built, aided by heavy rain, caused the debris flow and tree fall that investigators say likely caused the train to derail.
“That’s an old cut from when it was blasted for the railroad to go through,” said Stock. “It appears to be a small, thin failure off a modified piece of landscape.”
With tracks historically built on the flattest possible ground, often near rivers in valleys and canyons alongside steep hills, “washouts” in the industry are fairly common, said Gus Ubaldi, an Ohio-based engineer who specializes in railroads.
Even with frequent inspections, washouts are nearly impossible to predict, and “can happen in an instant. It’s an act of God,” he said.
Union Pacific inspects its track through Niles Canyon at least twice weekly, Schmidt said, with additional inspections done when storms, earthquakes or other weather- or geology-related events occur, as required by federal regulations. Locomotive engineers operating freight and passenger trains through the canyon also keep an eye out for any slide potential, Schmidt added. In addition, state and federal regulations require regular vegetation maintenance.
The decision to halt service can be made if a storm is deemed a threat to train crew or passenger safety. All UP tracks in California are subject to a “very robust” inspection process, and the tracks had gone through an additional “stormwatch” inspection just ahead of this weekend’s rainstorms, said Francisco Castillo, a Union Pacific spokesman.
Because there were no other slides reported from the recent storms — the area received about 2.13 inches of rain since March 1, according to the National Weather Service — Stock speculated that the ground movement started from a saturated tree falling, pulling debris down onto the tracks with it. An Alameda County sheriff’s deputy said the smell of eucalyptus, a tree prone to fall during landslides, was overwhelming at the scene Monday night. He also saw the tracks littered with shards of tree branches.
Whatever brought the hillside down was not unusual for the area.
Stock said he’s found at least five newspaper articles on major slides since the 1860s impacting rail traffic. In December, the Alameda County Public Works department issued a study concluding “the entire Niles Canyon corridor is notorious for rockslides and landslides, which often activate during rainfall or seismic events.” A 2004 California Geological Survey study reached the same conclusion.
The Pacific Locomotive Association, which runs the six-mile historical Niles Canyon Railway on the north side of the canyon, fights mudslides and related issues every few years. The most recent was on Christmas Eve 2013, said President Henry Baum; the mudslide didn’t cover the rails but diverted water runoff that undermined the track and closed it temporarily.
“We spend a lot of time and money cleaning up small slides making sure they don’t turn into big ones,” he said.
The only landslide in Niles Canyon that Schmidt said he could remember since ACE started operations in October 1998 was a small one several years ago encountered by a Union Pacific freight train. That train did not derail, he said.
Many years before ACE started operations, a landslide damaged a part of the current-day ACE line alongside Old Altamont Pass Road about a mile west of the old Altamont summit. That resulted in a “shoofly” built around the slide area, a little curve in the track that became permanent.
