Tag Archives: Amtrak

Crude By Rail, Derailment, Emergency Readiness & Response, Massive increase in crude-by-rail, Oil spill

Preparing for a railway disaster in Ashland, Virginia

Repost from The Herald-Progress, Ashland, VA

Preparing for a railway disaster in Ashland

January 28, 2015

Every day, 40 trains carry 30,000 loads of freight – some containing volatile materials – while another 22 trains transport 6,000 passengers through the “Center of the Universe.”

A lot could go wrong.

But CSX and local emergency services officials assured members of town council last week that stringent planning and strong communication between agencies should help ensure a swift response in the event of a train emergency or prevent one all together.

The issue of rail safety is tied to what Bryan Rhode, CSX regional vice president in charge of state government affairs in Virginia, called an “energy revolution” currently underway in the United States.

Crowds line the train tracks in downtown Ashland as a CSX train makes its way through town in this 2012 Herald-Progress file photo.
Crowds line the train tracks in downtown Ashland as a CSX train makes its way through town in this 2012 Herald-Progress file photo

With increased domestic oil production come questions about how to get those resources to market. Rhode said that traditionally, crude oil would be transported by pipeline, but that infrastructure doesn’t exist in many of the new areas where the raw materials are being extracted, and that’s where rail comes in.

“This idea of moving crude [oil] by rail really sprung up a couple years ago,” Rhode said. “I’ve talked to people who have been with CSX much longer than I have and they tell me if somebody had come to them five years ago and said we’d be moving crude oil by rail, they would have said, ‘You’re crazy.’”

But it’s now something railroads are doing in increasing volumes even though Rhode said transporting crude oil still only constitutes about 2 percent of CSX’s business.

The issue has received increasing attention following a CSX train derailment in Lynchburg last April, when a large shipment of crude oil exploded along the James River and near the city’s downtown sector.

“In a lot of ways we got very lucky because nobody was hurt or killed,” Rhode said. “But it was still something that impacted Lynchburg, impacted the James River and something that we strive every day to avoid allowing to happen again.”

Even prior to the Lynchburg crash, there had been a push for safer crude oil transport. In February 2013 the Federal Railroad Administration issued a number of emergency orders and regulations aimed at enhancing safety. Following the crash, Rhode said the federal government implemented more stringent regulations concerning the shipment of crude oil by rail and HAZMAT materials, in general.

But despite those regulations and what Rhode called a culture of safety at CSX, accidents still can and do occur.

“We do everything we can to prevent accidents from happening, but when you’re moving huge amounts of material in large equipment, we all recognize that sometimes, despite our best efforts, things do happen,” Rhode said. “Our goal is zero preventable accidents.”

Emergency plans in place

Hanover is contained in the RF&P sub-division of what CSX calls its Baltimore division, bookended by Richmond to the south and Philadelphia to the north.

According to Henry Moore, division chief of planning for Hanover Fire-EMS, molten sulfur and crude oil comprise half of all hazardous materials making their way through the county on a daily basis. Ethanol carloads are also increasing with about 210,000 gallons of the volatile substance making its way by rail to Stafford County on a daily basis.

Moore said Hanover and the region have bolstered their foam suppression capabilities in preparation for a derailment or catastrophic event and that regional response teams routinely participate in emergency exercises in preparation for railroad accidents where hazardous materials are present.

Hanover has in place a standard operating guideline for responding to railroad emergencies and also maintains an initial responder checklist for public safety personnel created for joint response to train crises.

Anthony Callahan, deputy chief of the Ashland Police Department, said all Ashland officers are trained in how to handle critical incidents. In the advent of a train-related incident, responding officers are taught to first establish communication and to contact other resources. Officers are also instructed to designate a “danger zone,” where only emergency responders are allowed, and to set up inner and outer perimeters. They would then implement an incident command post to direct emergency personnel and secure a staging area for other first responders.

However, Callahan said that his officers will assume different roles based on the severity of the actual incident. In cases where a car is stuck on the tracks, for example, Callahan said the first responding unit would get in touch with CSX and work to get the occupants out of the vehicle, with the immediate consideration being the health and safety of individuals on scene and in the area.

In cases where there has been a collision requiring any sort of spill cleanup, Callahan said Fire-EMS would take the lead, with APD in a support role.

In case of an incident, Rhode said CSX also brings a number of resources to the table, including trained personnel and heavy equipment staged throughout its network to ensure a quick response.

If a community is impacted, CSX steps up to offer relocation services and local aid.

Rhode said that in the advent of an actual emergency, cross-jurisdictional communication is key. In the case of the Lynchburg incident, officials from CSX had existing relationships with state and local emergency response teams.

“We weren’t handing out business cards. We all knew each other; we’d worked together before,” Rhode said. “If you don’t know each other and you’re not talking to each other before [an emergency] happens, you’re probably going to have issues.”

Fortunately, ties are strong between CSX and local fire, EMS and law enforcement agencies, officials told town council.

Rhode said CSX partners with local first responders to make sure they have the training they need to effectively respond to an incident. This takes place through online courses and local “tabletop” exercises on up to specialized, in-person, training dealing specifically with crude oil accidents.

Moore said Fire-EMS is in the final stages of planning a joint Amtrak derailment tabletop exercise in Ashland with Randolph-Macon College and the Ashland Police Department. The training should take place in the coming spring, one more safeguard aimed at ensuring this train town also remains a safe town.

 

AMTRAK, Crude By Rail, Federal Regulation (U.S.), Freight trains, Positive Train Control, Train speed

U.S. oil train rule changes would have side effects on passenger, freight traffic

Repost from The Democrat & Chronicle, Rochester, NY

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 result of the debate will affect both local passengers who use Amtrak — 145,000 people boarded or got off at the Rochester Amtrak station in 2013 — and local activists worried about potential safety issues involving the oil tanker trains that run through Monroe County. Between 20 and 35 oil trains roll across upstate each week, passing through Monroe County on their way to Albany.

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.

Bakken Crude, Bridge safety, Crude By Rail, Derailment, Emergency Readiness & Response, Hazmat notification, Rail routing

KCBS 740AM PART III: Emergency Plans Stall Out For Trains Transporting Bakken Crude Oil In The Bay Area

Repost from CBS SF Bay Area 740AM (Part 3 of 3)
[Editor: Important coverage of bridge and infrastructure safety issues by Bay Area radio station KCBS 740AM.  See and listen also to Part I, Aging Railway Infrastructure Raises Safety Concerns As Bay Area Readies To Receive Dramatic Increase Of Bakken Crude Oil AND Part II, Safety Info For Alhambra Trestle In Martinez And Other Bridges Kept By The Railroads.  – RS]

Emergency Plans Stall Out For Trains Transporting Bakken Crude Oil In The Bay Area

The Alhambra Trestle in Martinez. (Jeffrey Schaub/CBS)
The Alhambra Trestle in Martinez. (Jeffrey Schaub/CBS)

KCBS Cover Story Special, Part 3 of 3, Produced by Giancarlo RulliDecember 31, 2014.  KCBS reporter Jeffrey Shaub and producer Giancarlo Rulli investigate the Bay Area’s aging railway bridges that will carry increasing loads of highly volatile Bakken crude oil from North Dakota in this three-part KCBS Cover Story Special.

MARTINEZ (KCBS) – In May, U.S. transportation officials ordered the nation’s rail companies to disclose information to emergency responders on the routes and number of trains carrying a highly volatile crude oil through the Bay Area and elsewhere.

But some Bay Area and California officials claim the railroads are dragging their feet, stalling efforts to come with an emergency plan in case of a major disaster on the tracks.

According to the BNSF Railway, every 7-10 days, a 100-car long train carrying Bakken crude oil make sits way through Contra Costa County over the Alhambra trestle in Martinez.

Residents Bill Nichols and Jim Neu are among the many who have serious concerns. “The scary thing about the crude, it already has a proven track record of catastrophic accidents,” said Nichols. “These are ticking time bombs waiting to go off. If there was ever a derailment, it would affect the town with major casualties,” Neu said.

Contra Costa County Fire Protection District Marshal Robert Marshall worries about a train derailing from that height. “If you drop something from that height, it’s going to create a lot of damage.”

Marshall said he’s been working to create an emergency response plan, but needs to know how many trains are coming and when. But he said the state Office of Emergency Services can’t tell him. State OES Deputy Director Kelly Huston said that’s because the railroads haven’t provided him with that information.

“We’d love to be able to look it up online like an Amtrak schedule and be able to tell specifically when a terrain is coming through, where it’s going and give that direct access to local first responders,” Huston said.

KCBS has learned that BNSF sent a confidential letter to the Office of Emergency Services in September, informing them that Contra Costa County will see at least a 25 percent increase in Bakken fuel trains. But BNSF refused to say exactly how many and when, citing federal regulations and that they consider the information to be a confidential trade secret.

Bay Area Congressman John Garamendi disagrees. “It must be made available to the local emergency response agencies,” Garamendi said.

BNSF spokesperson Lena Kent said the company’s track record of moving hazardous materials speaks for itself.

“We handle all of our commodities with safety at the forefront. It’s far safer to move hazardous materials over our nation’s railroads then on our nation’s highways,” she said.

But longtime Martinez City Councilman Mark Ross said the railroad needs to be a better partner by being transparent and ensuring public safety. “Why don’t you get ahead of it, let’s work with government, work with the cities and communities that you’re running through, and solve the problem now.”

Hear the entire three-part cover story series.
Bakken Crude, Crude By Rail, Hazmat notification

Oil Trains Hide in Plain Sight

Repost from The Wall Street Journal
[Editor: This is a must-read.  IMPORTANT – See the Wall Street Journal site for an excellent video report and an interactive U.S. map showing  the weekly average number of crude oil trains from the Bakken Shale in North Dakota that pass through each county.  – RS]

Oil Trains Hide in Plain Sight

Rail Industry’s Secret: Volatile Crude Routes Often Kept From Cities and Towns
By Russell Gold, Dec. 3, 2014
tank car 1267
Finding the locations of oil-filled trains remains difficult, even in states that don’t consider the information top secret. WSJ’s Leslie Eaton and Simon Constable discuss. Photo: AP

NEWARK, Del.—Early last year, a new kind of pipeline full of volatile oil appeared in this college town, halfway between Philadelphia and Baltimore.

If it had been a traditional pipeline, there would have been government hearings and environmental reviews. There would be markers or signs along the line’s route and instructions for nearby residents on how to react in an emergency. A detailed plan for responding to a spill would be on file with the federal government.

 

None of that happened here in Newark. In fact, nobody initially notified the city’s fire chief about the new line, which can carry more than a hundred thousand barrels of oil a day along Amtrak’s busiest passenger-rail corridor.

See Related Video on #WorldStream

This was possible because the oil here is transported by a virtual pipeline: mile-long strings of railroad tanker cars that travel from North Dakota to a refinery in Delaware. In Newark, the cars are especially easy to spot as they often sit for hours on tracks 10 feet away from passing passenger trains, waiting for an opening at the nearby PBF Energy Inc. plant.

While the existence of this virtual pipeline is obvious to its neighbors—trains are visible from homes, the local commuter rail station, a park and a popular jogging trail—it is officially secret. Delaware Safety and Homeland Security officials contend that publicizing any information about the oil trains parked there would “reveal the State’s vulnerability to terrorist attacks,” according to a letter to The Wall Street Journal.

A Norfolk Southern Corp. train
A Norfolk Southern Corp. train in a refinery in Delaware, waiting to unload its cargo of crude oil from North Dakota. Russell Gold/The Wall Street Journal

Finding the locations of oil-filled trains remains difficult, even in states that don’t consider the information top secret. There are no federal or state rules requiring public notice despite several fiery accidents involving oil trains, including one in Lac-Mégantic, Quebec, that killed 47 people.

The desire for secrecy seems wrongheaded to some experts. “If you don’t share this information, how are people supposed to know what they are supposed to do when another Lac-Mégantic happens?” asked Denise Krepp, a consultant and former senior counsel to the congressional Homeland Security Committee.

She said more firefighting equipment and training was needed urgently. “We are not prepared,” she said.

In May, federal regulators ordered railroads to tell states about the counties traversed by trains carrying combustible crude oil from the Bakken Shale in North Dakota so local first responders could be notified.

The Journal submitted open-records requests to all 48 contiguous states and the District of Columbia and received at least some information from all but 14: Colorado, Delaware, Idaho, Indiana, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Nevada, Ohio, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont and West Virginia.

Mapping data received from the disclosing states, the Journal found a lot of other cities in the same situation as Newark. On its way to refiners on the East Coast and along the Gulf of Mexico, oil often sits in tank cars in railroad yards outside Harrisburg and Pittsburgh, Penn., and passes through Cleveland, Chicago, Albany, Seattle and a dozen other cities.

Bakken oil is flowing in two directions from North Dakota: west toward Portland and the Puget Sound; and east through Minneapolis, then southeast through Chicago, and across the northern edge of Indiana and Ohio. There it splits into three routes: One heads to Albany; another goes to Yorktown, Va., where the crude is transferred to barges for trips up and down the East Coast. The third heads to Philadelphia through Ohio, which is one of the states that doesn’t disclose data, but the Journal was able to deduce the routes by following available maps.

Other oil trains run south from Oregon to California, from Minnesota to Texas, and from Wisconsin toward the Gulf Coast.

Maryland previously had attempted to release oil-train information, but was successfully sued by Norfolk Southern Corp. and CSX Corp. Norfolk argued that these trains were carrying “highly volatile cargo” that could be a target for terrorists.

Railroads have continued to press for secrecy; in August, the Association of American Railroads and the American Short Line and Regional Railroad Association wrote a confidential letter to the federal government asking that routing information be kept from the public. The request was denied.

“The rail industry is concerned making crude oil route information public elevates security risks by making it easier for someone intent on causing harm,” said AAR spokesman Ed Greenberg. The group said it supports sharing information with local officials.

Neither the oil nor the railroad industry anticipated the rapid and dramatic rise of oil shipments by train. In 2009, U.S. railroads transported about 21,000 barrels a day of oil; today they carry 1.1 million barrels a day, according to data from the Surface Transportation Board, a federal regulator. Last year, railroads generated about $2.15 billion in revenue from moving crude.

Shipments of hazardous material, especially crude oil, have soared recently, even for railroads whose routes are far from the oil fields of North Dakota. Norfolk Southern and CSX, which serve the East Coast, moved 53,001 carloads of oil in the three months ended September, compared with just seven carloads during the same period of 2009, according to data from the federal Surface Transportation Board. They transported 156,731 carloads of industrial chemicals, some of which are hazardous, in the third quarter of this year, up 8% from five years ago.

Trains are the new pipelines, and have become a vital link in the energy infrastructure, said Dave Pidgeon, a spokesman for Norfolk Southern. “We are the keystone, the bridge, between the source of where the energy is extracted and where it is refined,” he said. Moving hazardous material like crude, he added, is “safe and getting safer.”

Trains offer the energy industry flexibility to move oil where it can fetch the highest prices. Building the needed loading and unloading terminals is fast and inexpensive, and an extensive rail network connects the Midwest to the East and West coasts.

While these virtual pipelines can be created in months, traditional pipelines have become increasingly difficult to install as environmental groups seek to block permits for new energy infrastructure.

“What we are seeing on rail is largely due to opposition to and uncertainty around building pipelines,” said Brigham McCown, who was the chief pipeline regulator under President George W. Bush . Pipelines, he adds, are far safer than trains.

Since Lac-Mégantic, several trains have derailed and exploded. Most of these accidents have happened in relatively rural areas like Casselton, N.D., a town of about 2,500 people 24 miles west of Fargo. But one occurred in downtown Lynchburg, Va., forcing the evacuation of much of the downtown in a city with 78,000 residents.

In response, railroads agreed to slow oil trains to 40 miles an hour in urban areas, and federal regulators have proposed a broader speed limit for older tank cars carrying volatile crude oil.

The rules don’t apply to other freight trains or Amtrak trains that share tracks in Newark with oil trains; about 85 Amtrak trains run through Newark every day, according to a spokesman, at speeds of up to 100 miles an hour. In addition to Norfolk Southern, which operates on the outskirts of town, CSX runs oil trains on a wholly separate track heading north toward refineries near Philadelphia.

Without oil trains, the local PBF Refinery might not be operating. Opened in 1956 on the Delaware River, the refinery handled imported oil that arrived by water from overseas; it was mothballed in 2009 as the economics of importing crude oil soured and demand for gasoline slumped.

PBF bought the refinery in 2011, reopened it the next year and began adding facilities to unload crude from trains. The company owns or leases 4,000 tank cars, has 1,900 more on order and said it is committed to using the safest cars available.

The refinery built a double loop that can accommodate two trains, each holding 70,000 barrels of crude. It can take workers 14 hours to unload each train by connecting hoses to drain out the cargo.

The Bakken crude contains a lot of butane, making it volatile but useful for mixing with heavier oils or as a refined byproduct, said refinery manager José Dominguez. On a recent afternoon, the refinery was running mostly Bakken oil, along with some diluted crude from Canadian oil sands and a ship’s worth of light sweet oil from Basra, Iraq.

When Norfolk Southern began routing crude trains through Newark, it didn’t notify the local emergency officials. Last March, a year after trains started turning up, Fire Chief A.J. Schall sat down with officials from the railroad and refinery to discuss the crude shipments.

“It shows a lack of communication,” he said. By the summer, Norfolk Southern and PBF paid for Mr. Schall and another local fire chief to fly to Colorado and attend a three-day class on crude-by-rail trains.
Some people who live and work along the tracks say that they are disquieted by the increased traffic and especially of the new presence of mile-long strings of black tanker cars, but unaware of any new accident-preparedness plans.

Demitri Theodoropoulos, who manages a record store facing the intersection, said that since 2004 his security cameras have recorded 14 collisions, including one in 2012 when a train smashed into a large truck.

“We have major, major freight traffic here,” he said. “I see trains with crude every day or so. I don’t like it, but this is the way it is.”