Did a “Bomb” Train Full of Volatile Crude Oil Pass By Tuesday’s Mariners Game?
By Sydney Brownstone, Apr 23, 2015 at 1:50 pm
This was taken at around 8:15 p.m. at Tuesday night’s Mariners game. Courtesy of David Perk
Maaaaaybe it wasn’t the thrill he was looking for.
A spectator at Tuesday night’s Mariners game caught a glimpse of what appeared to be a crude-oil unit train moving past Safeco Field.
The attendee took video and photos while taking a walk behind the scoreboard, but didn’t want to be credited for them. David Perk, a friend of the photographer’s who was also at the game, passed along the images on that person’s behalf. Perk, a volunteer with the Washington Environmental Council, went to the game because of the ticket special to honor local volunteering efforts.
Perk says he first spotted the train while driving to the game from Renton. “I was wondering if it was going to roll north while having our tailgate party on the side of the tracks,” Perk said. Nearly 14,000 people attended the game, according to Seattle Mariners spokesperson Rebecca Hale.
Burlington Northern Santa Fe wouldn’t confirm whether the train was carrying crude, but the Sightline Institute’s Eric de Place said that the train was “almost certainly a unit train of crude.” Unit trains often contain a hundred or more tank cars, and can measure as long as a mile. The train was also heading north, which means that it was likely full and heading for refineries near Anacortes or Ferndale.
Unit trains moving crude from the shale oil fields of North Dakota (also known as “bomb trains”) carry a unique risk of derailing and exploding. The US Department of Transportation has estimated that an average of 10 crude-oil trains will derail a year over the next two decades. The DOT has thus far failed to finalize safety rules for crude-by-rail, but did order a 40-mile-per-hour speed limit on unit trains through populated areas last week. On April 14, the Washington State House also passed an oil transportation safety bill sponsored by Representative Jessyn Farrell (D-Seattle).
Much of downtown Seattle falls within the crude-oil route’s half-mile blast zone, including Safeco Field, which sits right next to the railroad. But railroads aren’t required to share crude-oil routes with the public. Earlier this month, Seattle’s new fire chief, Howard Scoggins, told reporters that a derailment in Seattle would “exhaust our resources and require assistance from communities around us.”
Repost from NBC12 Richmond, VA [Editor: You would NOT BELIEVE the NUMBER of news stories on the Friday 4/17 release of federal orders by the DOT, FRA and PHMSA. I won’t post a long list here – for a sample, just Google “oil train speed” and look through the 9,800 hits when you limit results to NEWS in the last week! Better: just read the summary below. For a good critique, see Law360.com’s “Enviro Groups Call DOT’s Oil Train Speed Limit ‘Toothless'”. – RS]
Agencies coordinate actions to increase safe transportation of energy products
By Mike McDaniel, Updated: Apr 20, 2015 6:37 AM PDT
The U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) announces with its agencies, the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) and Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA), a package of targeted actions that will address some of the issues identified in recent train accidents involving crude oil and ethanol shipped by rail. The volume of crude oil being shipped by rail has increased exponentially in recent years, and the number of significant accidents involving trains carrying ethanol or crude oil is unprecedented.
“The boom in crude oil production, and transportation of that crude, poses a serious threat to public safety,” stated U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx. “The measures we are announcing today are a result of lessons learned from recent accidents and are steps we are able to take today to improve safety. Our efforts in partnership with agencies throughout this Administration show that this is more than a transportation issue, and we are not done yet.”
These actions represent the latest in a series of more than two dozen that DOT has initiated over the last nineteen months to address the significant threat to public safety that accidents involving trains carrying highly flammable liquids can represent. Today’s announcement includes one Emergency Order, two Safety Advisories, and notices to industry intended to further enhance the safe shipment of Class 3 flammable liquids.
Actions
Preliminary investigation of one recent derailment indicates that a mechanical defect involving a broken tank car wheel may have caused or contributed to the incident. The Federal Railroad Administration is therefore recommending that only the highest skilled inspectors conduct brake and mechanical inspections of trains transporting large quantities of flammable liquids, and that industry decrease the threshold for wayside detectors that measure wheel impacts, to ensure the wheel integrity of tank cars in those trains.
Recent accidents revealed that certain critical information about the train and its cargo needs to be immediately available for use by emergency responders or federal investigators who arrive on scene shortly after an incident. To address the information gap, DOT is taking several actions to remind both the oil industry and the rail industry of their obligation to provide these critical details
PHMSA is issuing a safety advisory reminding carriers and shippers of the specific types of information (*listed below) that they must make immediately available to emergency responders;
FRA and PHMSA are issuing a joint safety advisory requesting that specific information (*listed below) also be made readily available to investigators;
FRA is sending a request to the Association of American Railroads asking the industry to develop a formal process by which this specific information (*listed below) becomes available to both emergency responders and investigators within 90 minutes of initial contact with an investigator, and;
FRA submitted to the Federal Register a notice proposing to expand the information collected on certain required accident reports, so that information specific to accidents involving trains transporting crude oil is reported.
DOT has determined that public safety compels issuance of an Emergency Order to require that trains transporting large amounts of Class 3 flammable liquid through certain highly populated areas adhere to a maximum authorized operating speed limit of 40 miles per hour in High Threat Urban Areas. Under the EO, an affected train is one that contains: 1) 20 or more loaded tank cars in a continuous block, or 35 or more loaded tank cars, of Class 3 flammable liquid; and, 2) at least one DOT Specification 111 (DOT-111) tank car (including those built in accordance with Association of American Railroads (AAR) Casualty Prevention Circular 1232 (CPC-1232)) loaded with a Class 3 flammable liquid.
“These are important, common-sense steps that will protect railroad employees and residents of communities along rail lines. Taking the opportunity to review safety steps and to refresh information before moving forward is a standard safety practice in many industries and we expect the shipping and carrier industries to do the same,” said Acting FRA Administrator Sarah Feinberg.
“Our first priority is to prevent these accidents from ever happening,” stated Acting PHMSA Administrator Tim Butters. “But when accidents do occur, first responders need to have the right information quickly, so we are reminding carriers and shippers of their responsibility to have the required information readily available and up to date.”
The actions taken today coincide with actions being taken by other government agencies including the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the Department of Energy (DOE).
*Information required by PHMSA Safety Advisory
Basic description and technical name of the hazardous material the immediate hazard to health;
Risks of fire or explosion;
Immediate precautions to be taken in the event of an accident;
Immediate methods for handling fires;
Initial methods for handling spills or leaks in the absence of fire;
Preliminary first aid measures; and
24-hour telephone number for immediate access to product information.
*Information sought by U.S. DOT in the event of a crude-by-rail accident:
Information on the train consist, including the train number, locomotive(s), locomotives as distributed power, end-of-train device information, number and position of tank cars in the train, tank car reporting marks, and the tank car specifications and relevant attributes of the tank cars in the train.
Waybill (origin and destination) information
The Safety Data Sheet(s) or any other documents used to provide comprehensive emergency response and incident mitigation information for Class 3 flammable liquids
Results of any product testing undertaken prior to transportation that was used to properly characterize the Class 3 flammable liquids for transportation (initial testing)
Results from any analysis of product sample(s) (taken prior to being offered into transportation) from tank car(s) involved in the derailment
Date of acceptance as required to be noted on shipping papers under 49 CFR § 174.24.
If a refined flammable liquid is involved, the type of liquid and the name and location of the company extracting the material
The identification of the company having initial testing performed (sampling and analysis of material) and information on the lab (if external) conducting the analysis.
Name and location of the company transporting the material from well head to loading facility or terminal.
Name and location of the company that owns and that operates the terminal or loading facility that loaded the product for rail transportation.
Name of the Railroad(s) handling the tank car(s) at any time from point of origin to destination and a timeline of handling changes between railroads.
Since 2013 there have been 23 crude-related train accidents in the United States with the majority of incidents occurring without the release of any crude oil product. The actions taken today can be found at the following link:
April 23, 2015, Contact: Monica Schmalenberger, (916) 651-4003
SACRAMENTO—Legislation authored by Senator Lois Wolk (D-Davis) to protect communities along rail lines by requiring a safe crew size for trains operating within California secured passage from the Senate Labor Committee yesterday on a 4-1 vote.
“Today’s freight trains carry extremely dangerous materials, including Bakken crude oil, pesticides and rocket fuel that may pose significant health and safety risks to communities and our environment in the case of an accident,” said Wolk. “With over 6000 miles of railroad track that crisscrosses the state through wilderness and urban areas, the potential for derailment or other accidents containing these materials is an ever present danger.”
SB 730 prohibits a train or light engine hauling freight in California from being operated unless it has a crew consisting of at least 2 people. It also authorizes the California Public Utilities Commission to assess civil penalties against anyone who willfully violates this prohibition.
The California Public Utilities Commission voted unanimously last week to support SB 730, stating that requiring two-person crews is a straightforward way of ensuring two qualified crew members continue to operate freight trains in California until such time as the rules and practices of safe operation may be updated for safer operation with smaller crews. According to the Commission, of all the industries subject to their oversight — energy, water, telecommunications, and transportation — rail accidents result in the greatest number of fatalities each year.
“SB 730 is a great step toward enhancing safety and security on our state’s rail system by requiring two operating crew members to be on board each freight train and light engine,” said Timothy Smith, State Chairman of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers & Trainmen, the sponsor of SB 730, “This is very similar to the necessity of having a pilot and co-pilot on every airliner. The people of this great state demand this type of check and balance for the sake of rail safety and rail security for themselves and our environment. If SB 730 becomes law, the railroad industry will move one major step closer to ensuring that those goals are realized.”
SB 730 will next be heard in the Senate Appropriations Committee.
For anyone expecting the soon to be released oil-by-rail regulations to make any meaningful improvements to safety, it would be wise to review the full comments made by Rep. Speier.
It has been more than four years since a gas pipeline exploded in Speier’s district in San Bruno, California resulting in eight deaths, huge fires and destruction of a neighborhood. In her testimony she recounted how the state regulators were clearly in league with industry prior to this accident. And in the time since she has come to find that federal regulators, the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA), “does not have the teeth—or the will—to enforce pipeline safety in this country.”
PHMSA is the agency also in charge of the new oil-by-rail regulations as it is a division of the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA). One thing is certain — the new regulations won’t address the volatility of Bakken oil. The White House has already decided that the regulations will not deal with this issue and instead they left it up to North Dakota to deal with it.
North Dakota passed regulations that went into effect April 1 that require the oil to be “conditioned” prior to shipment by rail to address the volatility. However, as has been documented on DeSmogBlog before, conditioning doesn’t remove the volatile and explosive natural gas liquids from the oil. That requires a process known as stabilization.
So with no rules in place to require the oil to be stabilized, future train accidents involving Bakken oil will very likely be similar to the seven that have occurred since July 2013. Huge fires, exploding tank cars and the now all too familiar Bakken mushroom cloud of flame.
There have been seven accidents and it has been the same in all of them. But the White House has decided that the regulations don’t need to address this issue.
It is interesting that the DOE is commissioning reports on this topic since the department has no regulatory oversight of oil-by-rail. The report received little attention upon its release, although it was immediately touted by the American Petroleum Institute (API) as proving that the characteristics of crude oil had nothing to do with the fires occurring in the Bakken train accidents.
The API press release stated, “The Department of Energy found no data showing correlation between crude oil properties and the likelihood or severity of a fire caused by a derailment.”
During the recent hearing, this new DOE report was cited twice by two separate members of Congress. They both used the report to question a statement recently made by Federal Railroad Administration acting administrator Sarah Feinberg regarding the need for the oil companies to reduce the vapor pressure and volatility of oil for rail transport. Reducing the vapor pressure and volatility would require stabilization.
Early in the hearing, Rep. Lou Barletta (D-PA) read a question that contained the exact same description of the report’s conclusion as the API press release.
“You [Feinberg] have recently called on the energy industry to quote ‘do more to control the volatility of its cargo.’ You may have seen a recent report from the Department of Energy where the agency found no data showing correlation between crude oil properties and the likelihood or severity of a fire caused by a derailment.”
Later in the hearing, Rep. Brian Babin (R-TX) read the exact same statement. It appeared even Feinberg was a bit surprised at being asked the exact same question by two different congressmen as she responded, “I’m happy to take that question again.”
So, while the API wasn’t at this hearing, they had two members of Congress directly reading prepared questions that echoed their press release on the DOE report word for word.
Watch video of the two identical questions asked at the hearing:
The first important thing to note about the “no data” talking point is that it is true. The report did not find data on this because that isn’t what the report was designed to do. The report reviewed three field sampling studies on the characteristics of Bakken crude oil. None of these studies looked at “correlation between crude oil properties and the likelihood or severity of a fire caused by a derailment.”
It is easy to say you found “no data” when you know there is none in your source material to begin with.
Perhaps the most insidious part of this is that no one at the hearing called them on their blatant mischaracterization of the report and their ignorance of the science of Bakken oil and volatility.
In a recent article about the volatility of oil in Al Jazeera, an actual petroleum engineer clearly stated what is widely known in the oil and rail industries but is “debated” by the API and congress and regulators to avoid having to regulate the Bakken crude.
“The notion that this requires significant research and development is a bunch of BS,” said Ramanan Krishnamoorti, a professor of petroleum engineering at the University of Houston. “The science behind this has been revealed over 80 years ago, and developing a simple spreadsheet to calculate risk based on composition and vapor pressure is trivial. This can be done today.”
A bunch of BS. The oil industry, DOE, FRA and PHMSA want us to believe that the properties of oil aren’t currently understood. And as outrageous as that assertion is, multiple hearings and reports have been conducted on the matter. And many more will occur before anything is done.
The DOE report outlines all of the further research the department will be doing on this issue over the next couple of years.
And as previously reported on DeSmogBlog, the exact same thing is happening with tar sands oil and dilbit. Hearings, studies, reports. With many of the studies and reports being directly funded by the American Petroleum Institute and its members. All dragging on years after major incidents like the Kalamazoo River dilbit spill.
In her testimony, Rep. Speier didn’t hold back on her feelings about the failures of the regulatory system.
PHMSA is not only a toothless tiger, but one that has overdosed on Quaaludes and is passed out on the job.
But the reality is that PHMSA is just a small piece of the much larger puzzle that includes the Department of Energy, the White House, the Federal Railroad Administration and first and foremost, the American Petroleum Institute and their supporters at all levels.
A couple of days after the hearing, FRA acting administrator Sarah Feinberg appeared on Rachel Maddow’s show to discuss this problem and said the following regarding stabilization of oil.
“The science is still out. The verdict is still out on what the best way is to treat this product before placing it into transport.”
Watch FRA acting administrator Sarah Feinberg in this Maddow clip:
But the science isn’t still out. Even in the DOE report, it clearly states that the oil needs to be stabilized to reduce the vapor pressure and that conditioning the oil, as they currently require in North Dakota, does not accomplish this.
To add to the absurdity of this situation, Feinberg admitted to Maddow that the oil industry stabilizes the oil before it is transported in pipelines or on ships. Apparently the science is crystal clear in those cases.
So while Feinberg got beat up at the hearing by congressmen and their API talking points, there was Feinberg on Maddow’s show spouting other API talking points.
Rep. Speier is probably wrong. The system isn’t fundamentally broken. This would be true if the system was designed to keep the public safe, but it isn’t. The system is designed to keep corporate profits safe so the reality is that the system is working as designed. And the bomb trains continue to roll.
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