Bakken Crude, Crude By Rail, Phillips 66, San Luis Obispo County, Santa Maria Refinery, Tar sands crude

San Luis Obispo Refinery Wants Oil by Train

Repost from The Santa Barbara Independent

SLO Refinery Wants Oil by Train

Phillips 66 Runs into Public Resistance over Proposal to Lay New Tracks and Unload More Canadian Crude

By Natalie Cherot, January 23, 2015

Courtesy PhotoA slow-moving pipeline moves a haul of crude oil to a refinery just north of the Santa Barbara County border. Stand on the nearby coast’s 18,000-year-old sand dunes and look away from the sea, and a perfect view emerges of the expansive Phillips 66 Santa Maria Refinery. The name is a misnomer. The San Luis Obispo facility on the Nipomo Mesa is 17 miles northwest from the City of Santa Maria. Directly south is the Santa Maria River.

Golden Sierra Madre mountains shimmer in the distance, and hearty sage scrub surrounds its perimeter alongside grazing cattle. The night sky around the facility is never dark; its aquarium lights border on festive. The illumination is necessary because the refinery is open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. It begins the process of turning crude into a finished product like gasoline, diesel, or jet fuel, and pumps the semi-refined batches 200 miles north to the San Francisco Bay Area plants for finishing.

With oil prices dropping and California supplies both dwindling and facing harsh competition from North Dakota, much speculation swirls on the question of what kind of oil will arrive to the refinery on the dunes in the coming years. Right now it is “mostly used for California-produced oil,” said Phillips 66 spokesperson Rich Johnson.

But as of 2013, Phillips 66’s newest product is Canadian tar sands, a thick, gooey combination of clay, sand, water, and viscous bitumen. It’s hard to control and expensive to process. The Kearl Lake tar sands field cuts through Alberta’s boreal forest and wetlands, and has been turned into a mined landscape. An estimated 170 billion more barrels are still available for the taking.

In the summer of 2013, Phillips 66 submitted permit applications to San Luis Obispo County’s Planning Commission to add 1.3 miles of train track to its Santa Maria Refinery’s existing rail spur so crude can be delivered by train rather than by pipe. The proposed upgrades, which include five parallel tracks, an unloading facility, and new on-site pipelines, wouldn’t increase the amount of crude processed at the facility — volume is capped by the county’s Air Pollution Control District — but they reflect an increasing amount of oil train traffic across the country. BusinessWeek.com reported that it’s tripled in the last four years.

According to the project’s draft Environmental Impact Report (EIR), the facility would be able to handle five train unloads a week for a maximum of 250 a year. Each train with about 80 tanks on board would carry between 1.8 million and 2.1 million gallons of crude.

A first draft of the EIR — which indicated that both Canadian tar sands and North Dakota Bakken formation crude would be carried on the trains — was published that fall and received 800 public comments. The massive amount of feedback, much of it negative, prompted the Planning Commission to delay a final decision on the project. The commission issued a second 889-page draft EIR in October 2014, and a few weeks from now, a public comment period will take place. The date has not been finalized.

The biggest contention in the first draft was about Bakken crude. “The bottom line is Bakken Crude likes to burn and it will not take much to get it going,” wrote Paul Lee, battalion chief for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection in a letter to the San Luis Obispo Planning and Building Department. For preparation of the second draft EIR, Phillips 66 requested the county “delete statements suggesting that the Bakken oilfield as the most likely source of crude oil.” The new draft EIR states no Bakken will arrive by rail. Phillips’s spokesperson Rich Johnson said the refinery can’t handle the sweeter, lighter Bakken crude, as it specializes in the ultra-heavy tar sands.

Four accidents involving Bakken crude are mentioned in the latest report. A 30,000-barrel spill occurred in April 2014 in Lynchburg, Virginia, when a transport train derailed and erupted into flames. In November 2013, a train jumped the tracks in Aliceville, Alabama. Twelve tanker cars of Bakken spilled and caught fire. The next month, another oil train crashed in Casselton, North Dakota, where 20 cars of Bakken exploded and burned for 24 hours. Forty-seven people died when a train carrying the crude derailed and exploded in Quebec on July 2013.

The Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration has issued a warning to move transportation of Bakken oil away from highly populated areas because of explosion risks. “Most think that Crude will not get going unless it gets warmed up first and in some cases that is correct, [but] Bakken Crude does not need to be aggravated to burn or even explode,” wrote Lee. “The NTSB (National Transportation Safety Board) is concerned about its ability to explode so much in fact that there is a recommendation to have rail avoid populated areas.”

Phillips 66’s rail expansion plan is part of larger national strategy to better accommodate tar sands coming out of the ground quicker than the current system of pipelines can handle. “Our real challenge that we have, or opportunity that we have, is to get advantaged crudes to the East Coast and West Coast,” said Greg Garland, chairman and CEO of Phillips 66, at the Barclays CEO Energy-Power Conference last year. “So we’re working that in terms of moving Canadian crudes down into California or building rail facilities.”

Two thousands miles north in Alberta, Canada, the contentious Keystone XL pipeline would transport tar sands through Montana, Nebraska, Illinois, Oklahoma, and Houston. The pipeline’s foes claim the fuel is too emission-intensive and corrosive to pipelines. Supporters say if the Keystone XL is blocked, tar sands will come by the more dangerous transportation methods of boat or rail. Recent Philips 66 literature states: “Until new pipeline projects come online, rail is in many cases the easiest and most cost efficient way to get advantaged crude to some of our refineries.”

Trains coming and going from Santa Maria Refinery would travel the path of the Union Pacific Rail, on tracks shared by Amtrak. They would make the journey north through the Nipomo Mesa, up the precarious Cuesta Grade through Paso Robles, Salinas, and San Jose. Then they head through Richmond, then Berkeley. Richmond and Berkeley city councils recently passed resolutions calling for stricter regulations on crude oil trains.

The paths of the trains coming from the south — and carrying crude from any number of sources — are unclear and not ironed out in the draft EIR, but they would likely go through Ventura and Santa Barbara counties. A potential path indicated in the report heads through downtown Moorpark at the eastern edge of Ventura County after it passes through Simi Valley, but that potential route may have hit a glitch.

On December 17, the Moorpark City Council voted to send a letter to the San Luis Obispo Planning Commission opposing Phillip 66’s proposal because of its potentially hazardous risks. “I feel strongly that we need to show a little bit of leadership here as a city to formally object to this,” said one councilmember. “Hopefully other cities along this track will as well.” According to the report, once the trains leave Moorpark they could head through Camarillo to Ventura and along the coast to Carpinteria, Santa Barbara, and Goleta.

Johnson does not see much long-term job growth — or even stability — at the refinery given its current pipeline setup and a recent dip in statewide supplies. To stay competitive, company officials have argued, the refinery needs to revamp its intake methods so it can accept crude from other sources. “We are trying to keep the jobs we have,” Johnson said of the 200 people working at the plant. “Oil production in California is on the decline.” Rumors of a too-twisted and warped Monterey Shale formation from years of tectonic activity became a public reality in May when the government agency, Energy Information Administration, downgraded a predicted 13.7 billion barrels of recoverable oil to 600 million.

Bakken Crude, Crude By Rail, DOT-111, Ethanol, Federal Regulation (U.S.), Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA), Pipeline transport, Tank car design

DeFazio Blasts U.S. DOT for Failing to Address Rail Tank Car Safety

Press Release from Congressman Peter DeFazio

DeFazio Blasts U.S. DOT for Failing to Address Rail Tank Car Safety

Will request an Inspector General audit of PHMSA safety programs

From Press Release, 22 Jan 2015

Washington, D.C. – Today, Ranking Member of the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure Peter DeFazio (D-OR) sent a letter to U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) Secretary Anthony Foxx, urging him to take immediate action to address rail tank car safety and other significant pipeline and hazardous materials safety hazards.

“Despite numerous incidents involving the transportation of crude oil and other flammable materials by rail, subsequent NTSB safety recommendations, and an industry petition for new tank car design standards, the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) failed to take action until a train transporting crude oil in DOT-111 tank cars in Lac-Megantic, Quebec, killed 47 people and completely destroyed the town center,” said DeFazio. “Here we are almost 15 months later, and we still do not have a final rule.”

DeFazio also takes issue with PHMSA’s failure to address longstanding, significant safety issues that extend to pipelines.

In multiple pipeline accident investigations over the last 15 years, the NTSB has identified the same persistent issues–most of which DOT has failed to address. Each time, Congress has been forced to require PHMSA to take action, most recently in the Pipeline Safety, Regulatory Certainty, and Job Creation Act of 2011. Yet three years later, almost none of the important safety measures in the Act have been finalized, including requirements for pipeline operators to install automatic shutoff valves and to inspect pipelines beyond high-consequence areas.

“For these reasons, I will soon be sending a letter to the DOT Inspector General (IG), requesting a thorough audit of PHMSA’s pipeline and hazardous materials safety program, including an evaluation of the agency’s effectiveness in addressing significant safety issues, congressional mandates, and NTSB and IG recommendations in a timely manner; the process PHMSA utilizes for implementing such mandates and recommendations; the sufficiency of PHMSA’s efforts to coordinate with the modal administrations and address safety concerns raised by those administrations; and any impediments to agency action, such as resource constraints.”

DeFazio urges DOT to take immediate action to address these serious safety issues. He writes that the tens of millions of Americans who rely on the Federal Government to protect their safety and health and our nation’s natural resources rightly deserve more than proposed rules that languish in the Federal bureaucracy.

The full letter to Secretary Foxx is below:

January 22, 2015

The Honorable Anthony Foxx
Secretary of Transportation
U.S. Department of Transportation
1200 New Jersey Avenue, S.E.
Washington, D.C. 20590

Dear Secretary Foxx:

I write to express my serious concerns with the repeated failure of the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) to address longstanding and undisputed pipeline and hazardous materials safety issues.

The rule regarding Enhanced Tank Car Standards and Operational Controls for High-Hazard Flammable Trains is a prime example. The DOT maintains finalizing this rule remains one of its highest priorities, yet the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration’s (PHMSA) now reports that publication of a final rule is not anticipated until May 12, 2015. In fact, the DOT has not even transmitted a draft final rule to the Office of Management and Budget for review.

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has raised concerns about the “high incidence of failure” of DOT-111 tank cars since 1991. In fact, over the last 10 years, the NTSB has investigated or is currently investigating seven accidents involving the transportation of crude oil and other flammable materials in DOT-111 tank cars, including an October 2006 train derailment in New Brighton, Pennsylvania, which caused the release of 485,278 gallons of ethanol that ignited and burned for almost 48 hours; an October 2007 ethanol train derailment in Painesville, Ohio; a June 2009 ethanol train derailment and fire in Cherry Valley, Illinois, which killed one person, injured nine others, and resulted in a mandatory evacuation of about 600 residences within a half-mile radius of the accident site; an October 2011 ethanol train derailment in Tiskilwa, Illinois; a July 2012 mixed freight train derailment in Columbus, Ohio, which released 53,000 gallons of ethanol; a December 2013 train derailment and fire in Casselton, North Dakota, which resulted in the release of 476,000 gallons of crude oil and the evacuation of 1,400 residents; and, an April 2014 train derailment in Lynchburg, Virginia, which spilled 30,000 gallons of crude oil in and around the James River.

The NTSB has been made aware of (but is not investigating) five additional train accidents that occurred between August 2008 and February 2014 in the U.S., which involved the release of crude oil, causing significant environmental damage and fires.

In March 2011, the Association of American Railroads petitioned PHMSA to conduct a rulemaking on new tank car design standards, which seemingly languished in the bowels of the agency until 2013, when a train transporting crude oil in DOT-111 tank cars in Lac-Megantic, Quebec, killed 47 people and completely destroyed the town center. Coincidentally, two months later, PHMSA issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) on new tank car design standards.

Here we are almost 15 months later, and we still do not have a final rule. Frankly, I am concerned that opposition to the more contentious portions of the rule will only lead to further delays, possibly even litigation. That will end up postponing implementation of a final rule while the concerns of States and local communities are growing.

Moreover, these delays have significant implications for rail car manufacturers. It will take time for them to adjust to the standards proposed in the rule, which in turn will have a rippling effect on shippers who are putting off purchases of new tank cars until the new design standards are finalized. As I have said before, I believe that you should seriously consider severing this rule and propose one rule on stronger tank car design standards and another rule to address the operational changes proposed in the NPRM. That is sure to move this issue forward and address the more immediate dangers posed by the current DOT-111 tank cars.

Additionally, my concerns regarding PHMSA’s failure to address longstanding, significant safety issues extend to pipelines, as well. In multiple pipeline accident investigations over the last 15 years, the NTSB has identified the same persistent issues, most of which DOT has failed to address on its own accord. Each and every time, Congress has been forced to require PHMSA to take action, most recently in the Pipeline Safety, Regulatory Certainty, and Job Creation Act of 2011 (P.L. 112-90). Yet, three years later, almost none of the important safety measures in the Act have been finalized, including requirements for pipeline operators to install automatic shutoff valves and to inspect pipelines beyond high-consequence areas.

For these reasons, I will soon be sending a letter to the DOT Inspector General (IG), requesting a thorough audit of PHMSA’s pipeline and hazardous materials safety program, including an evaluation of the agency’s effectiveness in addressing significant safety issues, congressional mandates, and NTSB and IG recommendations in a timely manner; the process PHMSA utilizes for implementing such mandates and recommendations; the sufficiency of PHMSA’s efforts to coordinate with the modal administrations and address safety concerns raised by those administrations; and any impediments to agency action, such as resource constraints.

In the interim, I urge you to take immediate action to address these serious safety issues. The tens of millions of Americans who rely on the Federal Government to protect their safety and health and our nation’s natural resources rightly deserve more than proposed rules that languish in the Federal bureaucracy. If you need additional information or have questions regarding this letter, please have your staff contact Jennifer Homendy of my staff at 202-225-3274.

Sincerely,

PETER DeFAZIO
Ranking Democratic Member

 

Bakken Crude, Crude By Rail, DOT-111, Federal Regulation (U.S.), US Department of Transportation

Federal Court Order: Explosive DOT-111 “Bomb Train” Oil Tank Cars Can Continue to Roll

Repost from DeSmogBlog
[Editor: see also related story at SputnikNews.  – RS]

Federal Court Order: Explosive DOT-111 “Bomb Train” Oil Tank Cars Can Continue to Roll

By Steve Horn, 1/23/15

A U.S. federal court has ordered a halt in proceedings until May in a case centering around oil-by-rail tankers pitting the Sierra Club and ForestEthics against the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT). As a result, potentially explosive DOT-111 oil tank cars, dubbed “bomb trains” by activists, can continue to roll through towns and cities across the U.S. indefinitely.  

“The briefing schedule previously established by the court is vacated,” wrote Chris Goelz, a mediator for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. “This appeal is stayed until May 12, 2015, or pending publication in the Federal Register of the final tank car standards and phase out of DOT-111 tank cars, whichever occurs first.”

Order to Delay DOT-111 Bomb Trains Case
Image Credit: U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit

Filing its initial petition for review on December 2, the Sierra Club/ForestEthics lawsuit had barely gotten off the ground before being delayed.

That initial petition called for a judicial review of the DOT‘s denial of a July 15, 2014 Petition to Issue an Emergency Order Prohibiting the Shipment of Bakken Crude Oil in Unsafe Tank Cars written by EarthJustice on behalf of the two groups. On November 7, DOT denied Earthjustice’s petition, leading the groups to file the lawsuit.

Initially, DOT told the public it would release its draft updated oil-by-rail regulations by March 31, but now will wait until May 12 to do so. As reported by The Journal News, the delay came in the aftermath of pressure from Big Oil and Big Rail.

“In a joint filing, the Association of American Railroads (AAR) and the American Petroleum Institute (API) contend the tank car industry doesn’t have the capacity to retrofit the estimated 143,000 tank cars that would need to be modernized to meet the new specifications,” wrote The Journal News. “Nor can manufacturers build new tank cars fast enough, they say.”

The “bomb trains” carrying volatile crude oil obtained via hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) from the Bakken Shale, then, will continue to roll unimpeded for the foreseeable future. They will do so in the same DOT-111 rail cars that put the fracked oil-by-rail safety issue on the map to begin with — the July 2013 deadly explosion in Lac-Mégantic, Quebec.

And as DeSmogBlog has reported, industry promises to phase-out DOT-111s on a voluntary basis have rung hollow.

“The courts and the administration are dragging their feet on common sense safety steps that will take the most dangerous oil tanker cars off the tracks, slow down these trains, and help emergency responders prepare for accidents,” Eddie Scher, communications director for ForestEthics, told DeSmogBlog.

“We filed our lawsuit because the DOT is not moving fast enough on safety. This court’s decision ignored the imminent threat to the 25 million Americans who live in the blast zone and the communities around the nation that don’t have the luxury of waiting for DOT and the rail and oil industry lobbyists to finish their rule.”

Bakken Crude, Crude By Rail, Derailment, Emergency Readiness & Response, Explosion, Fire

New Technical Brief on Explosion, Fireball and Pool Fire Threats from Ignited Crude Oil

Repost from Homeland Security Today (HSTODAY.US)
[Editor: This article gives an overview of two expert briefs by AristaTek, both of which require sign-up and an online meeting before they can be downloaded.  Intended for hazmat teams, fire departments/fire marshals, sheriffs, and public safety/health professionals, but not available to the general public, SOMEONE should make sure our legislators, regulators, and first responders have accessed these important studies.  And hopefully, someone will share it with those of us who are opposing crude by rail.  I will post these documents here if/when I locate them.  – RS]

New Technical Brief on Explosion, Fireball and Pool Fire Threats from Ignited Crude Oil

By Anthony Kimery, Editor-in-Chief, 01/21/2015

In a follow-up to AristaTek’s January 2014 technical brief, Toxic Consequences of Smoke Plumes from Crude Oil Fires, that was prepared in response to the threat of an accident involving crude oil shipments, the company has prepared a new technical brief, Hazards Associated with Spilled Crude, to help with planning and response to accidents involving crude oil by consolidating several key pieces of information important to planners and responders.

A leading provider of hazardous materials planning and response solutions, AristaTek’s new brief to be released this week details the consequences of vapor cloud explosions, fireballs and pool fires for various quantities of spilled crude oil. AristaTek makes its technical briefings available at no cost to hazmat teams, fire departments, fire marshals, sheriffs, first responders and emergency response officials and any other public safety and health professionals to assist in their responsibility to protect their communities.

“We decided to do another tech brief on crude oil as there have been several articles lately about communities having done studies which show themselves to be largely unprepared for a disaster involving crude oil,” Homeland Security Today was told by AristaTek spokesman C. Scott Bunning. “Our brief provides a ‘Hazard Table’ for explosive and burn effects of both fireballs and pool fires for various along with other consolidated info we hope responders and planners will find as a useful resource.”

“During a train derailment involving crude oil, the immediate threats that responders worry about the most are the vapor cloud explosions and pool fires,” said AristaTek CEO Bruce King. “We felt analyzing these threats and providing an easy to follow table for various quantities of spilled crude would be a useful resource for planners and responders alike.”

“According to the American Association of Railroads, there were 362,000 carloads of crude oil shipped in the first three quarters of 2014,” the company said, pointing out that, “This amount is twice that of the same time period only two short years ago in 2012. Several high-profile accidents in 2013 highlighted the inherent dangers this substance can present to communities. Many states have conducted recent surveys of their response capabilities for accidents involving spilled crude and have found their responders largely unprepared for a large accident involving the substance.”

“A typical tank car may contain 30,000 gallons of crude oil, and could be part of a unit train containing over 100 tank cars. The most common accident is a train derailment, which may or may not result in a rupture spilling crude oil,” the brief says. And, “Because of its flammable nature, the crude may ignite resulting in explosions, fireball and pool fire. Multiple rail cars may be involved. The fire will also produce a dense black smoke cloud which could require evacuations or shelter -in-lace. There may be environmental concerns because of spills into a waterways.”

AristaTek said, “Crude oil presents several hazards when it is spilled in the environment and [its new technical brief] summarizes these hazards in a useful table. The first hazards happen when the spilled crude vaporizes, contacts an ignition source, explodes and also rapidly burns in a fireball. The resulting hazards are an explosion who blast is measured in overpressure, and the fireball which has a burn hazard for those standing too close.”

“The other hazard,” the firm said, “is a burn hazard associated with burning pool of spilled crude. The table offers safe-standoff distances for various quantities of spilled crude for all three hazards. The brief also offers some highlights of the recently issued industry reports on Bakken crude oil detailing characteristics of this type of crude and its lower flash point, and points out several government and industry sources for response information and protocols for emergency response.”

“The table of hazards was prepared using our flagship PEAC-WMD software, the world’s leading hazardous materials technical reference and modeling software,” King said. “Preparing this table and the brief overall is one of our efforts to provide a free but effective resource for those planners and responders attempting to prepare for this threat that isn’t going away any time soon despite the recent drop in oil prices.”

For safe and healthy communities…