Pennsylvania hires Zarembski to evaluate, advise on freight system risk mitigation
May 4, 2015
The state of Pennsylvania has hired Dr. Allan M. Zarembski to a three-month contract to assess the state freight system, which hosts 60-70 crude oil trains a week.
Zarembski, who is an internationally recognized expert in the area of railway track and structures, vehicle-track dynamics, failure and risk analysis, safety, railway operations, and maintenance, will evaluate Pennsylvania’s freight rail system and advise Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf on risk reduction and safety. Zarembski will also work to identify areas of high risk and make recommendations for crude-by-rail safety measures, as well as identify ways to implement those measures as efficiently and cost-effective as possible.
“My administration is focused on the safety of Pennsylvanians and protecting people from the potential disaster resulting from Bakken crude oil train derailments,” said Gov. Wolf. “I have expressed grave concern regarding the transportation of crude oil in the commonwealth and have taken several steps to prevent potential disasters. Zarembski is an internationally recognized rail expert and he has extensive experience with rail safety and risk analysis. Pennsylvania sees some of the largest volume of Bakken crude oil transportation by rail in the United States and the potential for disaster is too great to ignore. I will continue to take steps to ensure the safety of Pennsylvania’s citizens.”
A University of Delaware research professor and the director of the railroad engineering and safety program, Zarembski has extensive experience in rail operations, including freight operations, transit, commuter and inter-urban rail. Zarembski has authored or co-authored more than 170 technical papers, more than 120 technical articles and two books “The Art and Science of Rail Grinding” and “Tracking R&D” both published by Simmons Boardman Books.
Repost from DeSmogBlog [Editor: Sign the CREDO petition opposing the Enbridge expansion scheme. – RS]
Emails: How State Department Secretly Approved Expanding Piece of Enbridge’s “Keystone XL Clone”
By Steve Horn, April 20, 2015 – 03:58
DeSmogBlog has obtained dozens of emails that lend an inside view of how the U.S. State Department secretly handed Enbridge a permit to expand the capacity of its U.S.-Canada border-crossing Alberta Clipper pipeline, which carries tar sands diluted bitumen (“dilbit”) from Alberta to midwest markets.
Enbridge State Department Emails | Image Credit: U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota
Environmental groups have coined the approval process an “illegal scheme” because the State Department allowed Enbridge to usurp the conventional presidential permit process for cross-border pipelines, as well as the standard National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) process, which allows for public comments and public hearings of the sort seen for TransCanada’s Keystone XL pipeline.
Further, the scheme is a complex one involving Enbridge’s choice to add pressure pump stations on both sides of the border to two pipelines, Enbridge Line 3 and Enbridge Line 67, to avoid fitting under the legal umbrella of a “cross-border” pipeline.
Hastening the approval process — and thus dodging both the conventional presidential permit and NEPA process — came up in a June 6, 2014 memo written by Coburn and his Steptoe co-counsel Josh Runyan. Enbridge’s legal argument centered around ensuring profits for its customers “consistent with its obligations as a common carrier.”
On March 18, 2014, Ona Hahs, Attorney-Advisor for the State Department’s Office of the Legal Advisor, informed her Department colleagues in an email that “we have to wrap this up” because she was informed by Coburn that Enbridge was moving forward with the project and about to break ground on it.
Just over a week later on March 27, 2014, Hahs emailed her colleagues again, informing them that Coburn had just called her again and they were “running out of time” to offer Enbridge what it requested.
Though officially written by Cekuta, the bottom of the memo indicates it was drafted by both Hahs and Michael Brennan. Before serving in various capacities for the State Department beginning in 2003, Brennan worked for Shell Oil as its Manager for Export Sales Business Development in Asia and Latin America, according to his LinkedIn profile.
Later that same day, Brennan fired an email off to Coburn informing him of the State Department approval decision.
“Keystone XL Clone” Precedent Cited
In the June 6 memo penned by Enbridge’s counsel, its attorneys explained why “interconnections on Line 67 can take place in advance of the U.S. Department of State’s issuance of the Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (‘SEIS‘) and the requested Presidential Permit to authorize Enbridge to operate the border segment of Line 67 at its design capacity of 880,000 barrels per day.”
Among the myriad legal cases cited in the memo, Coburn and Runyan pointed to the Sierra Club, et al v. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers case reported on by DeSmogBlog, which Enbridge argued and won as a defendant.
Coburn and Runyan wrote that the Sierra Club v. Army Corps of Engineers case rejects the legal “argument that construction of pipeline outside the area of federal permitting jurisdiction could be [prohibited] pending NEPA review.”
“Because construction of the pump stations and interconnections are not occurring within the border segment of Line 67, and are independent from the Line 67 border capacity expansion…this activity is not required to await the completion of the SEIS,” they wrote.
That case, like the current one, centered around NEPA.
In that one, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers handed Enbridge a controversial Nationwide Permit 12 permit to build its now-operational Flanagan South pipeline, which Sierra Club argued circumvented the NEPA process. It appears that case set an important legal precedent.
Flanagan South connects to Alberta Clipper in Flanagan, Illinois and ends in Cushing, Oklahoma via a connection to the Seaway Twin pipeline, which Enbridge co-owns with Enterprise Products Partners. From there, the heavy tar sands dilbit is taken to Gulf coast refineries, the same ones TransCanada’s Keystone pipeline system currently feeds into.
Together, all three pipeline pieces make up what DeSmogBlog has called the “Keystone XL Clone” pipeline system.
“Stand Down”
Asked about the emails, Doug Hayes, the Sierra Club attorney working on the U.S. District Court of Minnesota case, wrote in an email to DeSmogBlog that he thinks the State Department is essentially partaking in a dereliction of duty.
“There is absolutely no question that the State Department has the authority to tell Enbridge to stand down and follow the process that was always intended,” wrote Hayes. “The State Department is just not taking its presidential permitting responsibilities seriously and letting Enbridge call the shots.”
Neither representatives from Enbridge, the Steptoe & Johnson attorneys nor the State Department officials involved in the behind-the-scenes permitting of the “illegal scheme” responded to requests for comment sent by DeSmogBlog.
Danielle Droitsch, senior attorney with NRDC, Canada Project Director, International Program.
By Danielle Droitsch, April 28, 2015
Many across the United States are aware of the tar sands threat posed by the proposed Keystone XL pipeline but what many may not know is the U.S. faces a looming threat that is bigger than just this one pipeline. We call it a tar sands invasion. The plan would be to complete a network of pipelines (both new and expanded), supertankers and barges, and a fleet of explosive railway tank cars. What is at risk? San Francisco Bay, Puget Sound, the Great Lakes, the Hudson River and other places we all call home. While the threat of this invasion is already here with the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, the good news is that citizens across North America are rising up to respond and repeal the assault with a clear message: Not by pipeline, not by rail, not by tanker. The good news is that public opposition to tar sands oil is rising and projects like Keystone XL and Northern Gateway have been delayed. The tar sands assault is not inevitable. In fact, the U.S. doesn’t need this dirty form of fuel and neither does Canada. The time has come to limit tar sands expansion in favor of a cleaner and brighter energy future.
A new report released by NRDC reveals that the amount of tar sands crude moving into and through the North American West Coast could increase by more than 1.7 million barrels per day if industry proposals for pipelines, tankers and rail facilities move forward. For more information about this new information see posts by my colleagues Anthony Swift and Josh Axelrod. Why the west coast? With the majority of the world’s heavy oil refinery capacity, the United States including the west coast is a critical market for the tar sands industry. To be clear, Keystone XL still remains at the heart of the industry plan to expand tar sands and gain access to the global market. But industry is still pushing hard for other ways to expand especially as KXL flounders. It is important to keep in mind the tar sands industry – which currently produces about 2 million barrels per day (bpd) – plans to triple production to exceed 6 million bpd in the next fifteen years. The oil industry has made clear it needs all of its rail and pipeline proposals to achieve its massive production goals.
We know that the tar sands industry and Canadian government has long had a plan to quadruple or more tar sands extraction in Canada. KXL has always been a huge part of that. But it is now very clear that they also plan to access the U.S. and global market through every means possible.
This threatened invasion puts our communities, waters, air and climate in jeopardy. The Tar Sands Solutions Network has done an outstanding job outlining many of the different campaigns that are emerging across North America. This plan threatens to expose communities from California to New York to health, safety and environmental risks unless the public rallies to stop it. Here are some of the specific impacts that North America faces as a result of the tar sands invasion:
Across the West Coast, tar sands laden tanker and barge traffic could increase twenty-five fold, with a projected 2,000 vessels along the Pacific West Coast– including the Salish Sea and the Columbia River–shipping nearly two million barrels of tar sands crude every day.
A dozen proposed rail terminals would substantially increase tar sands by rail traffic going through densely populated American citizens like Los Angeles and Albany New York risking explosive derailments of hazardous crude unit trains
Nearly a million barrels of tar sands would be destined for California and Washington refineries, exposing fenceline communities in Anacortes, San Francisco and Los Angeles to increasing toxic air pollution.
In the Midwest, the pipeline company Enbridge is moving to nearly double the flow of tar sands moving through the Great Lakes region, an area that already has suffered from a 2010 spill of more than 800,000 gallons of the tar sands into the Kalamazoo River in Michigan sending hundreds of residents to the hospital. Four years later, the cleanup, which has cost more than $1 billion, is still unfinished.
On the East Coast, the tar sands industry is seeking to build the Energy East pipeline across Canada. The pipeline would run from Alberta east across Canada to New Brunswick and Quebec, carry 1.1 million barrels of tar sands oil per day and require hundreds of oil tankers traveling along the East Coast and Gulf Coast annually, through critical habitat of the extremely endangered Right Whale.
In Albany, New York, a proposed oil transfer facility could lead to the shipment of tar sands oil on barges down the Hudson River or rail cars along the river destined for facilities in the New Jersey and Philadelphia areas.
In Maine, Vermont, and New Hampshire, the constant threat of a proposed reversal of the aging Portland-Montreal Pipeline is likely to arise again as Enbridge completes work on a pipeline reversal that will connect the tar sands directly to Montreal this summer.
This network of pipelines will feed refineries that produce millions of tons of hazardous petroleum coke waste – known as “petcoke” – which are piling up in residential neighborhoods like Chicago.
In Canada, pipeline companies are trying to access the west and east costs with pipeline proposals that would ship the heavy tar sands oil across pristine landscapes in British Columbia or across the Prairies into Ontario and Quebec. Communities are raising concerns about the threat of a spill to waters from the pipeline or tankers leaving the Bay of Fundy of the Gulf of St. Lawrence.
And last but not least, communities in Alberta at ground zero have been facing the enormous consequences of tar sands development which has brought about significant contamination of water, air, and land. Increasingly, there are calls for a moratorium on development.
Targeting at risk communities
The tar sands invasion puts a high toll on low-income and aboriginal communities located in railway corridors, near oil refineries, and next to petcoke waste sites. In refinery fence-line communities, emissions associated with tar sands are suspected to be even more detrimental to human health than existing harmful emissions from conventional crude. Derailments of tar sands unit trains – mile long trains carrying over a hundred tankers full of explosive tar sands crude – pose a catastrophic risk for communities throughout the country. And as more tar sands oil is refined in the United States, the public will also face increased health and environmental risks from massive piles of petroleum coke, a coal-like waste full of heavy metals that results from tar sands oil refining and can cause serious damage to the respiratory system.
Industry would like for you to believe that tar sands development is inevitable and there is nothing that can be done. Wherever they turn today they are being faced with public opposition. Expansion is not inevitable, especially because of this growing and formidable opposition.
A climate problem
It is clear that tar sands reserves – some of the world’s most carbon intensive – are at the top of the list of reserves that must remain in the ground. Mounting scientific and economic analysis shows that the tar sands industry’s proposed expansion plan is incompatible with global efforts to address climate change. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concludes that 75% or more of discovered fossil fuel reserves must remain in the ground in order to limit warming to the international two degrees Celsius goal. The clear inconsistency between tar sands expansion and efforts to address climate change have made opposition to tar sands expansion projects a clear rallying point for a broad group of allies advocating for action on climate.
A water problem
A tar sands spill from train, pipeline, or tanker could devastate local economies, pristine wilderness, harm human health, and lead to an especially costly and challenging cleanup. Tar sands spills have proven more damaging than conventional spills, as heavy tar sands bitumen sinks below the water surface making it difficult to contain or recover. A spill from shipping the tar sands crude could devastate communities, contaminate freshwater supplies or marine habitats and damaging local economies.
Undermining efforts to grow our clean energy economy
The growing exploitation of Alberta’s tar sands threatens to undermine North American efforts to build a clean energy economy and combat global climate change. Because most tar sands crude is destined for the United States, its expansion would create a greater dependence on the world’s dirtiest crude oil and undermine our transition to environmentally sustainable energy and a cleaner transportation fleet. Responding to the tar sands invasion will require solutions reduce fossil fuel use and spur low-carbon transportation and energy solutions such as broadened electric vehicle use and development of renewable and clean fuels.
This tar sands invasion can be stopped: Clean Transportation Solutions
The good news is this tar sands invasion can be stopped starting with leadership from government officials to embrace climate and sustainable transportation solutions. NRDC’s report for the west coast outlines detailed recommendations for decision-makers at all levels. The first step is for decision-makers at all levels to become familiar with the unique issues associated with tar sands oil and then to actively identify the full range of solutions to confront this problem. Without action, the U.S. will unintentionally become a thoroughfare for this oil undermining climate policies and presenting risks to communities and water. With support for regional clean energy policies, we can prevent the influx of tar sands crude and build the green infrastructure and public support necessary to begin transitioning to a clean energy economy.
New rules for rail tankers face years of debate, delay
By Curtis Tate, McClatchy Newspapers, May 2, 2015
The U.S. and Canadian governments have unveiled a long-awaited new standard for the tank cars used to transport crude oil and ethanol that includes numerous safety improvements.
But it is far from the final word on efforts to reduce the risk of catastrophic derailments, such as the one that killed 47 people in Lac-Megantic, Quebec, nearly two years ago. And industry and environmental groups are bracing for a court fight over portions of the regulations announced Friday that they don’t like.
Most of the current tank car fleet that doesn’t meet the new requirements will be allowed to carry ethanol and some types of crude oil for eight more years. Environmental groups and some lawmakers objected Friday to the extended timeline.
It will be two years before the Energy and Transportation departments complete a study on the properties of crude oil and how they affect the way it reacts in derailments. While the rail industry supports the new tank car standard, it opposes the requirement for an electronic braking system on certain trains.
The regulation also expands the amount of information about rail shipments of flammable liquids that will be available to emergency responders, but incorporates it into an existing regulation that would exempt it from public disclosure.
In Washington on Friday, Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx and his Canadian counterpart, Minister of Transport Lisa Raitt, rolled out the new regulations, which are generally in sync on both sides of the border, given the seamless nature of the North American rail system.
“Tank cars cross the border every day,” Raitt said in a news conference with Foxx, “so it’s important that the regulations apply equally in both countries.”
The new tank car, called the DOT-117, will have features that are designed to prevent it from puncturing in a derailment and to better withstand prolonged exposure to fire.
The regulation requires that beginning Oct. 1 new tank cars built to transport flammable liquids have thicker shells, full-height shields on each end of the cars and a layer of thermal insulation on the outside. The new standard also requires more protection for valves and outlets.
The railroad industry supports the new tank car design but opposes the requirement that certain types of trains be equipped with electronically controlled brakes by January 2021.
Since the late 19th century, trains have operated with mechanical air brakes. The Federal Railroad Administration has said that electronic brakes would enable trains to stop more quickly and could prevent the accordion-shaped pileups characteristic of recent oil train accidents.
In a phone call with reporters Friday, Ed Hamberger, the president and CEO of the Association of American Railroads, a leading industry group, criticized the braking requirement, saying it wouldn’t prevent accidents.
The industry could avoid the requirement by operating the trains it applies to at 30 mph or limiting them to 69 cars. Either way, Hamberger said, it would be costly and disruptive.
The industry is taking a look at its options to challenge the requirement, Hamberger said
Foxx said the electronic braking was reliable technology and that he hoped the railroads would accept it. He was also confident that the regulation would withstand a court challenge.
The rule might also face a challenge from environmentalists, who object to the retrofitting timeline. There have been four major oil train derailments since the beginning of the year, and environmental groups fear there might be more before the new requirements kick in.
The state of Pennsylvania has hired Dr. Allan M. Zarembski to a three-month contract to assess the state freight system, which hosts 60-70 crude oil trains a week.
