A Republican proposal has already gotten a hearing, and a Democratic one is ready to roll.
By John Stang, January 15, 2015
Tank cars hours after they derailed under the Magnolia Bridge in Interbay. Bill Lucia
Two competing oil-train safety bills have come into quick play in the Washington Senate.
A Republican measure, proposed by Sen. Doug Ericksen of Ferndale, received a hearing on Thursday before the Senate Environment, Energy & Telecommunications Committee, which he chairs. Also on Thursday, Democratic Sens. Christine Rolfes of Bainbridge Island and Kevin Ranker of Orcas Island introduced a bill to cover what Gov. Jay Inslee wants to do.
A preliminary Washington Department of Ecology study, released late last year, said that rapid increases in the amount of oil moving by rail in the state require new measures to protect the public and the environment.
Both bills increase per-barrel oil taxes to cover emergency response and planning expenses. Rolfes’ bill would impose charges on both crude and refined oil, while Ericksen’s addresses solely crude oil. Rolfes’ bill requires advance notice to the state of crude and refined oil going by rail, pipe or ship. Ericksen’s bill does not have those provisions.
Ericksen’s bill pays considerable attention to mapping out oil-emergency response plans by region across the state. And the Ericksen measure has more detailed provisions about providing state grants to emergency-service responders.
Thursday’s hearing had railroad, port and oil representatives supporting Ericksen’s bill, while environmental groups contended it did not go far enough.
Bruce Swisher of the Sierra Club argued that the bills must make information about upcoming oil train shipments available to the public as well as emergency departments. “The communities, not just the first responders, need transparency about what goes through their communities,” Swisher said.
Johan Hellman, representing the BNSF Railroad, said the company spent $125 million on track and crossing upgrades in Washington in 2013 and another $235 million in 2014. The railroad has also trained roughly 4,000 first responders in Washington on dealing with train derailments, he said.
In a statement, Ericksen said, “We’re trying to identify the gaps in existing programs and fill them.”
In 2013 and 2014, the United States had four oil train accidents that produced fires — one in North Dakota, one in West Virginia and two in New England. Closer to home, three 29,200-gallon oil cars on a slow-moving train derailed without any spills or fire beneath Seattle’s Magnolia Bridge last July. Looming over this entire issue is a July 2013 oil train explosion in Quebec that killed 47 people.
The report by experts hired by the state Ecology Department mapped out the oil transportation situation in Washington and the United States. Nationally, the number of rail cars transporting crude oil grew from 9,500 in 2008 to 415,000 carloads in 2013. In 2013, 8.4 percent of oil arriving at Washington’s five refineries came by rail, although the report indicates that the volume of oil shipped by rail to the refineries here was insignificant until 2011.
News Release from Center For Biological Diversity [Editor: see this story also in INFORUM (Fargo ND), which shows an interesting photo of a cross section from a damaged oil tanker car. – RS]
Department of Transportation Ignores Congressional Deadline for Upgrading Safety Rules to Prevent Oil Train Disasters
PORTLAND, Ore.— Ignoring a congressional stipulation in the 2015 budget bill calling for new safety rules for oil trains by Jan. 15, federal transportation officials now say they won’t update the rules until May. Amid mounting concerns over the unchecked rise in shipments of highly volatile crude oil by train that has resulted in several explosive derailments and dozens of fatalities in the past two years, the federal Department of Transportation has yet to enact any on-the-ground safety improvements.
“Every day of delay is another day of putting people and the environment at risk of great harm,” said Jared Margolis, an attorney at the Center who focuses on the impacts of energy development on endangered species. “Continuing to allow these bomb trains to operate under current regulations is simply rolling the dice as to where and when the next disaster will occur.”
While several explosive oil-train accidents have occurred since the rulemaking process began in September 2013, the agency has failed to take any immediate action to resolve well-established concerns, such as the use of unsafe, puncture-prone DOT-111 tank cars.
“DOT-111 tank cars were never intended to transport these hazardous products,” said Margolis. “Failing to ban them immediately is a failure of the government’s duty to protect us from harm.”
Congress, understanding that rapid action is essential to protect the public, put a requirement in the 2015 budget bill for federal transportation officials to issue new safety rules by Jan. 15; but the industry has been fighting to delay and chip away at any efforts that would make moving oil by rail more expensive, regardless of safety concerns.
“Bomb trains are just one of many dangers posed by our continued dependence on fossil fuels,” Margolis said. “Ultimately, if we’re going to avoid dangerous oil-train derailments, as well as avoid the climate catastrophe that is currently being caused by our emissions, we must move away from these dangerous fossil fuels.”
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The Center for Biological Diversity is a national, nonprofit conservation organization with more than 800,000 members and online activists dedicated to the protection of endangered species and wild places.
U.S. oil train rule changes would have side effects
By Brian Tumulty, January 13, 2015
Railroad oil tanker cars parked at the Port of Albany. Each week between 20 and 35 freight trains pulling such tankers roll through Monroe Coundy. (Photo: Mike Groll / AP file photo 2014)
WASHINGTON – Long-distance passenger and freight rail service could be headed for gridlock later this year if trains hauling crude oil and ethanol are limited to 40 miles per hour.
And it could get worse. If the controversial Keystone XL pipeline doesn’t win approval, the American Petroleum Institute estimates “an additional 700,000 barrels per day” will need to be shipped by freight rail. That would require an additional 1,000 rail tank cars every day to transport the tar sands oil the pipeline was intended to carry from Canada to the U.S.
Passengers in the tens of thousands per year travel on trains that stop in Rochester and could potentially be affected by the decisions that will soon be made.
The speed limit, proposed by federal regulators, would cause “severe disruption of freight and passenger rail service across the U.S.,” according to the National Shippers Strategic Transportation Council, a trade group.
The Association of American Railroad says the 40 mph speed limit, and a related proposal requiring freight trains carrying crude oil or ethanol to have electronically controlled pneumatic brakes, “would have a devastating impact on the railroads’ ability to provide their customers with efficient rail transportation.”
Amtrak, which carried 31 million passengers overall in 2013, runs most of its trains on tracks owned by the nation’s major freight railroads. Trains on the Albany-Syracuse-Rochester-Buffalo corridor use a pair of tracks owned by Florida-based CSX Transportation.
Under federal law, freight railroads are required to give priority to Amtrak as they dispatch trains on their systems. But the system has always been imperfect, and scheduling conflicts with freight trains, along with numerous other problems, have made delays a fact of life on most Amtrak routes.
Amtrak supports imposing the 40 mph speed limit only in federally defined “high-threat urban areas” where the risk of a catastrophe is considered greatest. There are just over 50 around the country, including the New York City metro area and Buffalo.
“Anything more restrictive, if it affected network fluidity, could have adverse effects on Amtrak,” the railroad wrote.
The challenge for the oil and gas industry is continuing to safely transport crude oil from new oil fields to refineries.
About 70 percent of crude oil produced in the Bakken Shale Formation of North Dakota and Montana is shipped by rail, according to the oil refineries trade organization.
And production is continuing to increase, from less than 200,000 barrels per day in 2008 to nearly 1.2 million barrels per day in 2014, according to the American Petroleum Institute. Freight railroads predict production eventually will reach 2 million barrels a day.
About 70 percent of ethanol also is transported by rail.
Meanwhile, the nation’s rail network is operating at near capacity. Last year, its choke points resulted in a dramatic drop in the on-time performance of many long-distance Amtrak passenger trains.
Amtrak’s Capitol Limited route between Chicago and Washington had an on-time performance of less than 3 percent in the three months ending Sept. 30. Amtrak provided bus service between Chicago and Toledo, Ohio, for six days in October because some trains were running 10 hours late.
Freight rail shipments from grain elevators faced delays of up to three months a year ago. Freight railroads weren’t prepared for harsh winter weather on top of increased crude oil shipments.
Freight railroads say they’re spending billions of dollars to improve capacity — they largely avoided delays in shipping farm commodities following this year’s harvest — but a 40 mph speed limit for oil trains could undermine that.
“The impact on railroad capacity can be compared to traveling on a two-lane highway,” the Association of American Railroads said. “Slowing down one car or truck affects trailing vehicles. Similarly, slowing down one train affects trailing movements, except that the impact on railroad traffic is much worse because the opportunities to pass are much more constrained than on a highway.”
Trains can pass only at widely spaced locations on a railroad, whether single or double-tracked. Research on rail capacity has shown, and rail operators have long understood, that reducing speeds reduces network capacity.”
At issue is safety in the wake of several derailments of oil trains. The most notable, in the Quebec community of Lac-Mégantic in July 2013, killed 47 people.
Many rail industry groups and shippers say federal efforts to improve the safety of “unit” trains carrying at least 100 tankers loaded with crude oil should focus on fixing faulty tracks. New speed reductions, they say, should be limited to the most densely populated areas.
The National Transportation Safety Board lists improvements in rail tanker car safety as one of its 10 most wanted safety improvements for 2015. It also lists installation of “positive train controls,” which automatically slow trains going into a curve if the operator doesn’t.
“The NTSB does not have a specific position on any specific speed limits but what we do want to make sure first of all is, does the train stay on the track,” said Robert Sumwalt, a member of the NTSB board. “And PTC (positive train controls) is one good way of ensuring that the trains stay on the track. We want to make sure if they do derail, there’s adequate protection in the tank cars. And finally if the tank cars breach, we want to make sure there’s adequate emergency response.”
Federal officials late last year received more than 3,400 public comments on an array of proposals aimed at safer transportation of crude oil by rail. They include a new design for tank cars, retrofitting existing tank cars, installing new braking systems and speed restrictions.
Three possible speed-limit scenarios been proposed — one would limit oil trains to 40 mph at all times. Another would impose the 40 mph limit only when trains pass through regions of at least 100,000 people, and another would impose it only in cities defined as high-threat urban areas.
Trains using a new generation of safer tank cars would be allowed to travel at 50 mph.
The proposed speed limit would apply to “high-hazard flammable trains,” which federal transportation officials would define as any train carrying at least 20 tankers loaded with crude oil or ethanol.
Railroads say 20 cars is too few because freight trains add and subtract cars as they move along the nation’s vast rail network.
The average unit train has 94 tank cars, according to the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers association, which represents the owners of 120 refineries.
Repost from NBC Bay Area [Editor: The Phillips 66 trains would come over the Sierra, and through Sacramento. From there, they COULD travel south through Stockton and then west to the Bay Area. OR they could continue west from Sacramento, through Davis, Dixon, Vacaville, Fairfield and BENICIA. Here the trains would cross two seriously aging bridges in Benicia and Martinez before traveling through the heavily populated East Bay and South Bay. See also the announcement by the Center for Biological Diversity. Apologies for the video’s commercial ad. – RS]
San Jose City Council Votes to Oppose Plans For Crude Oil Transport
By Robert Handa, Jan 13, 2015
A major oil company looking to transport millions of gallons of crude oil on a train line through San Jose and Santa Clara has many South Bay residents up in arms.
Part of the expansion of the Phillips 66 Santa Maria refinery operation includes transportation along a stretch on Monterey Road in South San Jose. Many people in the area are worried about a possible train derailment involving toxic crude oil.
“Our concerns are ‘What would happen if a derailment occurred?’ And, in particular, the load that the trains are carrying,” said Sergio Jimenez, who heads up a homeowners association in South San Jose.
A check of the area shows a fence separating homes from the train tracks.
City Councilman Ash Kalra proposed San Jose take a stance on the issue with a letter opposing the oil company’s plan.
“It’s coming right through our cities within a hundred feet of homes in my council district,” Kalra said. “Going through farmlands in my council district as well, and going through downtown.”
The issue was discussed at Tuesday’s council meeting and a debate lasted lasted late into the afternoon, with some council members saying it is the federal government’s job, not the city’s, to make the call.
“We should also be asking ‘Is enough being done to make us safe?'” Councilman Johnny Khamis said. “But not outright oppose it.”
Ultimately, the council voted unanimously to oppose the plans for crude oil to be transported through San Jose and urged the San Luis Obispo Planning Commission to reject the expansion proposal.
Other cities along the rail route affected by the Santa Maria Phillips 66 project have also submitted letters or passed resolutions against crude-by-rail, including Oakland, Berkeley, Richmond, Martinez, Davis and Moorpark.
