Crude By Rail, Risk Assessment, Train spotting

Carnegie Mellon University, Fractraker team up to monitor crude oil trains through PA region

Repost from Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

CMU, Fractraker teaming up to monitor crude oil trains through region

By Don Hopey, December 13, 2014

Trains carrying millions of gallons of crude oil from Midwestern shale oil fields pass through the region daily and at speeds approaching the limit established to reduce derailment risks, according to a pilot study by Fractracker Alliance and Carnegie Mellon University’s CREATE Lab.

The study counted 360 tanker cars bearing the Department of Transportation “1075” and “1267” flammable oil and gas placards on 10 trains passing through the city during 11 daylight hours on Oct. 21. Six of those 10 trains were traveling east with a total of 176 full tanker cars The other four were traveling west with 84 empty tanker cars.

The train spotting and rail car counting was done on Norfolk Southern’s Fort Wayne line, which runs along the Ohio River through Sewickley, Glenfield, Ben Avon, Avalon and the North Side. The study, conducted on just one of seven rail freight lines used by oil trains in Allegheny County, is the first to count the number of oil trains passing through, and there are plans to do several more.

The Fractracker news release about the study states that by tracking and monitoring the transport of oil and gas, “we can begin to understand the risks that these trains pose should an incident occur.”

“We want to study the oil trains issue in several ways across Pennsylvania and beyond, examining the communities and populations affected and evaluating the scale and dynamics of the train traffic, including speeds and volumes of cargo,” said Samantha Malone, a Fractracker spokeswoman.

The count totals are generally in line with estimated oil train numbers for the county provided by Norfolk Southern and CSX to the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency, information that PEMA was ordered to release in October after a Right to Know request by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

Ms. Malone said almost all of the trains were moving “very quickly” past the train spotting and counting location along Norfolk Southern tracks at Riverside Park, on Dawson Avenue in Glenfield. One, heading east with a load of full crude oil tank cars, was traveling much faster than the others at an estimated speed of 50 mph.

If accurate, that train violated the 40 mph speed limit cooperatively established in July for safety by the U.S. Department of Transportation and the Association of American Railroads in urban areas after several recent derailments involving crude oil tanker cars.

“We didn’t have a radar gun, but most of the trains were traveling faster than I would think would be safe for that area,” Ms. Malone said. “The one moving very fast I do believe was unsafe.”

A spokesman for Norfolk Southern, however, disputed that contention, saying it was “guesswork” and that the railroad complies with all state and federal rules and regulations.

As rail transport of shale oil and gases has increased over the last five years, the number of derailments has increased, too, along with concerns about the dangers the trains pose to towns and cities along their routes.

Oil train derailments, sometimes causing explosions and fires, have occurred in the last two years in Virginia, North Dakota, Georgia, Philadelphia and Vandergrift. The worst was the 2013 derailment of 74 tanker cars carrying crude from the Bakken Shale oil play in North Dakota that killed 47 people and destroyed 30 buildings in Lac-Megantic, Quebec.

Seventy percent of the tankers wore the DOT 1267 placard, used for “Petroleum Crude Oil, Flammable liquid.” The rest had DOT 1075 placards indicating they contained “butane, liquefied petroleum gas, Flammable liquid”

The longest train bearing the “1267” placard, running east, was hauling 97 full crude oil tanker cars with a total capacity of between 2.5 million and 3.4 million gallons of crude oil, according to the release.

David Pidgeon, a Norfolk Southern spokesman, released a statement saying the railroad doesn’t comment about the routing of specific commodities, like crude oil or gas, and declined comment on the study findings. He called the train speeding allegation “speculation and guesswork.”

“What I can say is that we are in compliance with state and federal regulations and are providing important information and training to first responders,” he wrote in the email statement. “That’s a critical part of operating a safe rail network.”

Henry Posner III, chairman of Railroad Development Corp., a rail industry investment firm, said the high-density freight lines passing through the city are well-maintained and, recent accidents not withstanding, the railroads have a “culture of safety.”

“There is no motivation for the trains to speed, and I’ve never seen it (speeding) permitted in my career,” said Mr. Posner, who has worked in various capacities in the railroad industry since 1977. “No one is going to put their job on the line to speed. It’s just not a part of our culture.”

Ms. Malone said Fractracker, in partnership with CMU’s CREATE Lab, will continue to collect rail shipping data from other states and regions to determine where the crude oil tank cars rolling through Pittsburgh are originating.

Working again with volunteer train spotters from the Group Against Smog and Pollution, Three Rivers Waterkeeper, and Women for a Healthy Environment, the Create Lab and Fractracker plan to conduct additional train tank car counts to confirm their initial count is representative of the train traffic going through the region. She said some of those counts will be held overnight, when some residents of the Glenfield area say trains are more numerous.

Top transportation officials from Canada and the United States are due to meet next week to hash out differences about safety regulations for trains that carry oil, sources familiar with the planned meeting told Reuters.

Both governments are drafting safety rules for trains that move fuel from North Dakota’s Bakken energy patch to refineries.

Bakken Crude, Crude By Rail, DOT-111, Federal Regulation (U.S.), Rail inspection, Tank car retirement, Tank car retrofit, U.S. Department of Transportation

Federal budget bill sets January deadline on safety rules for oil tanker cars

Repost from The Seattle Post Intelligencer (seattlepi.com)

Federal budget bill sets January deadline on safety rules for oil tanker cars

December 10, 2014 | By Joel Connelly
Tanker cars from a derailed CSX oil train burn after derailing in downtown Lynchburg, Virginia, last April. Increasing numbers of oil trains pass through Seattle and other Puget Sound cities en route to four refineries on northern Puget Sound. (AP Photo/City of Lynchburg, LuAnn Hunt)

Hidden away in Congress’ big spending bill, designed to fund the federal government through FY 2015, are stern marching orders to the U.S. Department of Transportation:

Deliver a final rule for new, safer oil tank car design standards by Jan. 15, 2015, and require that all rail carriers put in place comprehensive oil spill response plans.

The budget provisions, inserted by Sens. Patty Murray, D-Wash., and Susan Collins, R-Maine, are prompted by an oil train disaster in Quebec, and the rapid increase in trains carrying volatile Bakken crude oil from North Dakota to four refineries on northern Puget Sound.

“In Washington state, we’ve seen a startling increase in oil train traffic through communities of all sizes, from downtown Seattle to smaller, rural communities across the state,” said Murray, who has chaired the Senate Appropriations subcommittee on transportation.

“That’s why I worked to set a deadline for the Department of Transportation to issue new safety standards for tank cars next month and worked to fund a Shirt Line Railroad Safety Institute that will help protect smaller communities without sufficient resources to respond to oil trains.”

Oil tanker cars derailed under the Magnolia Bridge. No harm done, but not the case elsewhere.

An old adage applies to the oil train issue: There’s nothing like a hanging in the morning to focus the mind.

In July of 2013, brakes failed and an unmanned runaway train sped into the small town of Lac-Megantic, Quebec, just over the border from Maine. It blew up, killing 47 people and leveling downtown.

The train was using 1960′s-designed DOT-111 tank cars. Another train, using DOT-111 cars, exploded into mushroom-cloud flames last December outside Casselton, N.D.. It forced evacuation of more than 2,000 people from the small town.

While promising new safety measures, the Department of Transportation has been criticized for giving railroads too much wiggle room.

The DOT said last summer it is setting a two-year deadline for getting DOT-111 tank cars off the rails. In reading the fine print, however, the clock would begin ticking in September of 2015 — giving rail carriers more than three years to stop use of the explosion-prone tank cars.

The federal budget bill would make available $10 million in grants to improve safety at railroad grade crossings that handle crude oil or other hazardous flammable liquids.

The DOT gets resources to hire 15 new hazardous-materials and rail-safety inspectors and $3 million to expand the use of automated track inspections to make sure rail tracks are maintained on crude oil transportation routes.

In this Aug. 8, 2012 photo, a DOT-111 rail tanker passes through Council Bluffs, Iowa. DOT-111 rail cars being used to ship crude oil from North Dakota's Bakken region are an "unacceptable public risk," and even cars voluntarily upgraded by the industry may not be sufficient, a member of the National Transportation Safety Board said Wednesday, Feb. 16, 2014. The cars were involved in derailments of oil trains in Casselton, N.D., and Lac-Megantic, Quebec, just across the U.S. border, NTSB member Robert Sumwalt said at a House Transportation subcommittee hearing. (AP Photo/Nati Harnik, File)

Refiners and shippers have responded.

Tesoro has stopped use of DOT-111 tank cars to supply its Anacortes refinery. The Burlington Northern-Santa Fe Railroad has announced a purchase of new, safer tank cars.

But the railroads have continued to resist making full, up-to-date information on oil shipments available to state and local emergency responders. They are fearful the information will be made public.

While Murray is touting its oil train provisions, the $1.1 trillion spending bill has drawn some fire from the political left.

Republicans have secured concessions, loosening Wall Street regulation and letting wealthy donors give more to political campaigns. The bill has slightly weakened school lunch nutrition standards championed by first lady Michelle Obama.

Liberal Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Wash., is voting against the bill.

“It is inconceivable that Congress would cut crucial regulations in the Dodd-Frank Act, when risky derivatives trading was at the center of the 2008 financial crisis,” said McDermott.

“Why is Congress giving Wall Street a massive Christmas present, when so many hard-working Americans are struggling to make ends meet?”

Export of North American crude

House subcommittee hears arguments on crude exports ban

Repost from Reuters

U.S. lawmakers give preview of coming oil export fight

By Timothy Gardner, Dec 11, 2014

(Reuters) – U.S. lawmakers gave a preview on Thursday of a looming fight next year on lifting the ban on crude exports with supporters saying it would sustain the drilling boom and others questioning its impacts on industry and fuel prices.

In a House of Representatives hearing on the ban, Texas Republican Joe Barton said exporting oil would boost the economy, lower gas prices, and help give allies alternative oil supplies to Russia.

By some measures the United States is the world’s top oil producer and Barton said the country should use that power.

“When you’re number one, you use that status,” said Barton, who introduced a short, 1.5 page bill this week to lift the ban Congress passed in 1975 after the Arab oil embargo.

The U.S. drilling boom of the last five or six years has led to a glut of light crude many oil refiners, who paid dearly to retool plants to run heavy crude, are unable to easily process.

Barton’s fellow Republican, Lisa Murkowski, an Alaskan and the incoming Senate energy chairman, and Senator Heidi Heitkamp, a North Dakota Democrat, are big supporters of removing the ban. They face an uphill battle in both Houses of Congress in getting widespread support.

Many lawmakers from states with economies that are heavily dependent on energy are concerned they could see higher costs from U.S. oil exports. Barton’s fellow Republicans Representatives John Shimkus, and David McKinley of West Virginia, and Joseph Pitts of Pennsylvania, questioned the panel of oil market experts at the hearing on how industry would be affected by lifting the ban.

Pitts asked Adam Sieminski, head of the U.S. Energy Information Administration, if there was a guarantee lifting the ban would remove volatility in gasoline prices. Sieminski said there was a chance U.S. oil exports could cause global crude prices to rise temporarily if they caused unrest in an oil producing nation.

He stressed that U.S. gasoline prices are mostly based on global Brent crude prices, which many analysts say should fall in the long term if the U.S. ban is lifted.

Shimkus said he has “tons of questions” about removing the ban.

As pressure builds to lift the trade restriction, the U.S. Department of Commerce has told at least three companies that they can export a minimally-processed light crude called condensate.

Oil producers want the Obama administration to allow all condensate to be exported as a first step in removing the ban. There are no signs this will happen soon.

U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman has said the administration is looking at the oil export issue but there have been no policy changes. Froman told CNBC on Thursday the domestic oil boom has helped draw more investment to the United States and made it “a place where companies want to put their factories both to serve the U.S. market but also to export (products) all over the world.”

Murkowski has said she will introduce legislation, perhaps next year, to lift the ban if the administration does not take action.

(Additional reporting by Krista Hughes; editing by Andrew Hay)
Environmental Impacts, Federal Regulation (U.S.)

New federal budget is bad news for environment, great for Big Oil

Repost from Think Progress
[Editor: See also a similar story on Grist, The new federal budget is chock-full of goodies for pollutocrats.  – RS]

Six Of The Worst Environmental Provisions In The ‘Cromnibus’ Spending Bill

by Katie Valentine Posted on December 10, 2014

Congress unveiled its $1.01 trillion spending bill Tuesday, a 1,603-page piece of legislation that, if passed (and it may not be), will fund the government through September 2015. If passed, the bill — dubbed the “Cromnibus” for “continuing resolution plus omnibus” — would allow the government to avoid a partial shutdown. But it wouldn’t be good news for Americans who want the U.S. to do more on climate and environmental issues. The bill contains multiple attempts to undermine environmental efforts in the United States. Here are a few of the worst:

Preventing Endangered Species Listings

The spending bill would block any federal funds going toward determining whether the Gunnison sage grouse or greater sage grouse — two species of bird native to the western U.S. — are eligible for listing under the Endangered Species Act. The Gunnison sage grouse has been the subject of a decades-long fight between environmentalists, energy companies who want to drill in the sage grouse’s habitat, and ranchers who use the habitat for grazing land. The Gunnison sage grouse was listed as “threatened” by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service last month, but the agency originally had until next September to figure out a listing for the greater sage grouse. Under the spending bill, the agency would have to wait until after September 2015 to determine the greater sage grouse’s status. Concerns over what designation the sage grouse will be awarded have already scared off bidders for oil and gas leases in Nevada, as energy companies worry that an endangered status would make it too difficult to drill or frack in the region.

The bill does include $15 million for the Bureau of Land Management for sage grouse habitat conservation. Still, the National Audubon Society is not happy about the provision.

“The priority right now is to get science-based, state-level conservation plans in place that are effective enough to avoid a federal listing for the Greater Sage-Grouse in the first place,” Brian Rutledge, Audubon’s VP and Policy Director, said in a statement. “This rider will only complicate coordination between the BLM and statehouses and stems entirely from political chicanery, ignoring scientific input and voices across the Mountain West that want strong plans in place.”

Cutting Environmental Protection Agency Funds

Under the bill, the EPA would be allowed a $8.1 billion budget. That’s $60 million less than what the agency got last year, the Washington Post reports, and would mean that the agency, which works on things such as cleaning up Superfund sites and enforcing basic public health protections, would have to cut its staff down to numbers not seen since 1989. The last government shutdown reminded Americans of just how crucial the EPA is, when the agency was temporarily prevented from cleaning up nearly two thirds of the country’s toxic waste sites.

Blocking Regulation of Lead Ammunition

The spending bill includes a provision that would prohibit federal funds going toward regulation of lead in ammunition and fishing. It might not seem like the worst provision in the bill, but it has big implications: when hunters use lead bullets and leave carcasses in the woods, the lead can harm the birds and other scavengers that prey on the carrion. California became the first state to ban lead in hunting ammunition last year, in an effort to better protect the state’s rare California condors and other wildlife. But though the U.S. did ban the use of lead ammunition in water bird hunting in 1991, the country hasn’t acted to restrict lead ammunition for hunting of land birds and animals.

More Coal-Fired Power Plants And Less Renewable Energy Abroad

The spending bill would allow the Ex-Im Bank and OPIC to finance coal-fired power plants abroad, despite the fact that the Ex-Im Bank adopted guidelines last year that prohibited the financing of most coal-fired power plants, unless they used carbon capture technology. Those guidelines align with the U.S.’s stance on overseas coal financing, but the spending bill’s language attempts to put coal financing overseas back into the national conversation. “This provision is expected to increase affordable electricity, especially to those without current access to electricity, as well as to support increased exports from the United States and prevent the loss of United States jobs,” the bill’s authors write. It would also export carbon pollution at the expense of sustainable, clean energy for developing countries.

Preventing Funding To The Green Climate Fund

The bill states that “no funds may be made available for the Green Climate Fund,” an international fund aimed at helping developing nations deal with the impacts of climate change. This language comes despite the fact that, as the bill states, no funds were requested for 2015, and the fact that, according to one Democratic source in Politico, the Obama administration isn’t planning on asking for funds in 2015.

The fund has been in the news recently, as countries around the world have made pledges coinciding with the international climate talks in Lima, Peru. The fund reached its $10 billion goal this week, after Australia pledged AU$200 million ($165 million in U.S. dollars) to the fund. The U.S. has already pledged $3 billion to the fund, a pledge some Republicans have said could have a hard time getting authorized in 2015.

Prohibiting Regulations On Light Bulb Efficiency

The bill wouldn’t allow the federal government to provide funding to “implement or enforce” standards for light bulb efficiency, a rider that’s been introduced before in spending bills. A similar addition was included in January’s spending bill, and as Mother Jones reports, conservative lawmakers have been trying to prohibit the federal government from regulating light bulb efficiency for years, fighting against a 2007 law that stipulates light bulb efficiency.

For safe and healthy communities…