Tag Archives: Bakken crude

Bakken Crude, Crude By Rail, Derailment, Emergency Readiness & Response, Environmental Impacts, Explosion, Federal pre-emption, Fire, Fracking, Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), Hazardous cargo transparency, Hazmat notification, Homeland Security, Legal action, Public Safety

Maryland judge orders railroads to release oil train reports

Repost from McClatchyDC

Maryland judge orders release of oil train reports

HIGHLIGHTS
• Case marks first time railroads have lost on the issue in court
• Judge not persuaded that release would harm security, business
• Companies that filed 2014 lawsuit have until Sept. 4 to appeal

By Curtis Tate, August 17, 2015
Tank cars loaded with crude oil head east at Hurricane, W. Va., in May 2014. A Maryland judge has ordered the release of oil train reports to McClatchy and other news organizations. West Virginia and a handful of other states agreed to keep the the reports confidential.
Tank cars loaded with crude oil head east at Hurricane, W. Va., in May 2014. A Maryland judge has ordered the release of oil train reports to McClatchy and other news organizations. West Virginia and a handful of other states agreed to keep the reports confidential. Curtis Tate – McClatchy

WASHINGTON – A Maryland judge rejected two rail carriers’ arguments that oil train reports should be withheld from the public, ordering them released to McClatchy and other news organizations that sought them.

The ruling isn’t the first time railroads have lost their bid to keep the oil train reports secret, but it is the first court decision recognizing the public’s right to see them.

The U.S. Department of Transportation began requiring in May 2014 that railroads inform states of large shipments of crude oil after a series of derailments with spills, fires, explosions and evacuations. Since February, six more major oil train derailments have occurred in North America.

Nonetheless, some railroads have continued to press their case that the reports should be exempt from disclosure under state open records laws. Most states shared the documents anyway, and Pennsylvania and Texas did so after McClatchy appealed. Maryland is the only state that was taken to court after it said it would release the reports.

Norfolk Southern and CSX sued the Maryland Department of the Environment in July 2014 to stop the state agency from releasing the records to McClatchy and the Associated Press. They have until Sept. 4 to appeal the decision, issued Friday by Judge Lawrence Fletcher-Hill of the Circuit Court for Baltimore City.

Both companies, which transport crude oil to East Coast refineries concentrated in Delaware, Pennsylvania and New Jersey, said they would review the decision.

Dave Pidgeon, a spokesman for Norfolk Southern, said the company would “respond at the appropriate time and venue.”

Melanie Cost, a spokeswoman for CSX, said the railroad “remains committed to safely moving these and all other shipments on its network.”

The ruling isn’t the first time railroads have lost their bid to keep the oil train reports secret, but it is the first court decision recognizing the public’s right to access them.

In his 20-page opinion, Fletcher-Hill was not persuaded by arguments that releasing the oil train reports would harm the railroads’ security and business interests. He also dismissed the relevance of the U.S. Department of Transportation’s May final rule addressing the safety of oil trains. The companies had argued that the final rule supported their claims.

He also ordered the companies to pay any open court costs.

In a statement, Maryland Secretary of the Environment Ben Grumbles said the agency was pleased with the ruling and that it is “committed to transparency in government.”

Rail transportation of Bakken crude oil, produced through hydraulic fracturing of shale formations in North Dakota, has grown exponentially in the past five years. However, a series of fiery derailments, including one in Quebec in 2013 that killed 47 people, have raised numerous concerns about public safety, environmental protection and emergency planning and response.

U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx issued an emergency order on May 7, 2014, that required any railroad shipping 1 million gallons or more of Bakken crude oil through a state to inform that state’s emergency response commission what routes the trains would take and which counties they would cross, as well as provide a reasonable estimate of how many trains to expect in a week.

Beginning in June 2014, McClatchy submitted open records requests in 30 states for the oil train reports, including Maryland.

McClatchy was able to glean some of the details in the Maryland report through a Freedom of Information Act request to Amtrak, which owns part of Norfolk Southern’s oil train route in the state. The subsequent release of oil train reports in Pennsylvania revealed more about such operations in Maryland.

On Monday, Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf released an 84-page assessment of oil train safety in the state, which examined derailment risk, tank car failures and regulatory oversight. Some Maryland lawmakers have called for the state to perform a similar assessment.

Bakken Crude, Bridge safety, Crude By Rail, Derailment, Explosion, Fire, Tank car design, Tar sands crude, Valero Benicia Refinery, Water contamination

BENICIA HERALD LETTER: Allowing crude by rail is asking for trouble, Kathy Kerridge

Repost from the Benicia Herald
[Editor:  No link is provided for this letter because the Benicia Herald does not publish letters in its online edition.  A version of this letter also appeared in the Contra Costa Times.  – RS]

Allowing crude by rail is asking for trouble

By Kathy Kerridge, August 16, 2015, Benicia Herald

It’s time for Benicia and California to say no to bringing in crude oil by rail (CBR). This is the highly explosive and flammable Bakken crude from North Dakota, which exploded in Lac-Megantic, Quebec, killing 47.  This is what Valero wants to bring into Benicia and other refineries want to bring into the Bay Area.  There have been 30 major crude by rail accidents since 2012, including the latest on July 17 in Montana that spilled 35,000 gallons from a train that was going the legal speed limit.

The refineries also want to bring in tar sands crude from Alberta, Canada.  A spill of tar sands crude in water cannot be cleaned up.  The substances that dilute the tar sands (like benzene) so it can be transported evaporate and the tar sands sink to the bottom of the water.  $1 billion, yes that’s right billion, has been spent on the Kalamazoo River spill of tar sands and the river is still not clean.  Do we want a spill on the Benicia Rail Bridge into the Carquinez Strait or one in the Suisun Marsh?  How about the Feather River Canyon where a train carrying corn recently derailed sending its cargo into the river?

Say no to CRB going over high hazard areas.  Every rail line into the state goes through one.  Say no to CBR by earthquake faults.   Say no to trains carrying crude in cars designed to carry corn syrup.  Say no to the new cars which have also split and spilled in recent derailments.  Say no to bomb trains going through densely populated areas like Sacramento, Davis, and the East Bay.  Just say no to putting people, our water sources and our environment at risk

Bakken Crude, Crude By Rail, Derailment, Explosion, Fire, Oil spill, Pipeline transport, Rail Safety

Investment Analyst: Oil Train Derailments Pose Huge Risks

Repost from Energy & Capital

Oil Train Derailments Pose Huge Risks

New Regulations Haven’t Done Enough

By Keith Kohl, August 7, 2015

About 40 miles west of Williston, North Dakota — the epicenter of the Bakken oil formation — sits a tiny rural town that was recently rocked by a strange occurrence.

Culbertson, Montana, a town of less than 1,000 people just north of the Missouri River, saw a massive train derailment in July.

A 106-car BNSF Railway train was carrying oil from the Bakken to a BP refinery in Washington State, but when it reached Culbertson, 22 of the cars derailed and five began leaking crude.

When the cars derailed, a nearby power line was knocked over — a sure sign of imminent catastrophe.

Of course, train derailments and explosions are not strange occurrences these days. Such derailments have become an all-too-common consequence of North America’s shale oil boom.

In 2013, as I have discussed many times, a train derailed and exploded in the center of a small town in Canada, destroying several buildings and killing 47 people.

There was also a crash and explosion earlier this year in West Virginia that threatened residents and nearby water resources.

But this derailment in Montana was different…

You see, despite the five breached tankers, the more than 1,000 barrels of oil that leaked, and the downed power lines, there was no explosion.

CulbertsonCrash

There was no fire to speak of, either — just leaked oil and the torn metal of the train cars scattered near the tracks.

Many began to question exactly how an explosion was avoided and if such conditions could be replicated on all future oil rail shipments.

Unfortunately, as of yet, there are no definitive answers…

Air + Gas + Sparks = Explosion

A local sheriff’s deputy said of the spill: “You could smell it from over a mile away.”

As a precaution, some residents were evacuated, but BNSF crews quickly contained the leaked oil, and the debris and the tracks were soon restored to order.

Some have said that the reason the oil didn’t ignite was because the vapor pressure of the oil was in compliance with new regulations…

After a report released last year by the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration said that crude oil from the Bakken is more dangerous because of its higher-than-normal gas content, regulators in North Dakota required that any oil shipped from the Bakken be heated to 110 degrees to lower the gas content in the oil to below 13.7 psi.

According to Statoil, the owner of the crude in the train, the oil was below the 13.7-psi mark, and many commentators leaped to the conclusion that this prevented fires and explosions.

Of course, this is a bit disingenuous because, as I discussed in a column a few months ago, an oil train in compliance with the same standards crashed outside of Heimdal, North Dakota and burst into flames, forcing the evacuation of the small town.

heimdaltrain

Even though the oil was treated, it still caught fire, so it would seem that the lack of explosion or fire in the Culbertson crash had everything to do with luck and very little to do with science or regulation.

I’ll reiterate: It was very lucky indeed.

Usually a fire starts in a train derailment because the sparks caused by the friction of a train wreck meet the leaking oil and oxygen present in the air and combust.

Once oil and air meet fire, as you know, explosions happen — typically large ones.

Since the incident caused a power line to go down, it’s practically miraculous that there were no explosions or fires.

Still, can we really rely on luck to prevent the dangerous explosions caused by most derailments?

Pipelines are Coming

Despite all of the industry standards and new rules announced by the Department of Transportation, there’s still no definitive solution to stopping these crude oil derailments other than to cull the amount of oil shipped by rail.

Even with oil production in a tenuous position because of low prices, large amounts of crude are still shipped via rail.

And if rail shipments of oil were forcibly halted, the effects could be devastating on the companies drilling in the Bakken that need secure revenue streams now more than ever.

Instead, the solution to cutting traffic has to benefit producers and be market-based. The only way to do this is by pipeline.

As the amount oil traffic — and accidents — on rails has increased, so too has the call for construction of more pipelines.

Within a few years, the pipeline capacity in the U.S. is set to double, and when it does, there will hopefully be a reduction in railroad traffic and accidents.

Until next time,

Keith Kohl
Bakken Crude, Bomb Trains, Crude By Rail, Derailment, DOT-111, Emergency Readiness & Response, Explosion, Federal Regulation (U.S.), Fire

Video: Bomb Trains on the Hudson River

Repost from HudsonRiverAtRisk.com
[Editor:  Another excellent regional video about the potential for horrific environmental impacts due to crude by rail.  We are doing our best to guarantee that the marshlands, valleys, cities and towns of Northern California don’t become the next Hudson River Valley, transporting billions of gallons of Bakken Crude every year.  – RS]

BOMB TRAINS ON THE HUDSON – BAKKEN SHALE COMES TO THE RIVER

By Jon Bowermaster, July 13, 2015

The sight of long trains made up of one hundred-plus black, cylindrical cars, rolling slowly through cities and towns across North America – often within yards of office buildings, hospitals and schools — has become commonplace.

Few who see them know that these sinister-looking cars carry a highly flammable mixture of gas and oil from the shale fields of North Dakota. At thirty thousand gallons per car, each of these trains carries more than three million gallons of highly flammable and toxic fuel, earning them the nickname “bomb trains.”

I see them on a daily basis in the Hudson Valley, whether stacked up four-deep alongside the thruway in Albany, crossing an aging trestle bridge in Kingston, rolling behind strip malls and health care facilities in Ulster, paralleling the very edge of the Hudson River. Several of the long, ominous-looking trains snake south from Albany to refineries in Philadelphia every day, crossing New Jersey, paralleling Manhattan.

And this oil/gas combo is not just moving by rail: Last year three billion gallons of crude that arrived in Albany by train from the North Dakota were offloaded to tanks and then barges to be shipped downriver. The very first tanker carrying crude oil ran aground, a dozen miles south of the Port of Albany; thankfully its interior hull was not breached.

The boom in this train traffic – in 2009 there were 9,000 of the black rail cars, today there are more than 500,000 – correlates directly with the boom in fracking of gas and oil across the U.S. Record amounts of both are being pulled out of the ground in the Dakotas, Colorado, Texas and thirty other states and needs to be delivered to refineries. Pipelines take time to build and often run into community resistance; since there are railways already leading in every direction the oil and gas industry has taken them over. In 2010, 55,000 barrels of crude oil were shipped by rail each day in the U.S.; today it is more than 1 million barrels … per day.

During the same period there’s been another corollary, a boom in horrific railway accidents resulting in derailments, spills, fires and explosions. Sometimes they occur near fragile wetlands (Aliceville, AL, November 2013); sometimes in neighborhoods where hundreds must be evacuated (Casselton, ND, December 2013); and sometimes in the middle of a town (Lac-Megantic, Quebec, July 2013, where 47 people were killed in a midnight derailment).

Since February 14 a half-dozen of these “bomb trains” have derailed and spilled or exploded, in Illinois, Ontario and West Virginia, leaving widespread destruction and environmental damage in their wake. A half-mile on either side of the tracks is considered within the “blast zone” when these fuel-laden trains crash. Increasingly they are mentioned as potential terrorist weapons.

bomb_train_accidents_2013-2015Efforts to regulate this explosion of shipping by rail has proven difficult. It seems that no one wants to accept the responsibility (or costs) of improving the safety of the cars, the tracks, the infrastructure they run over or the volatile fuel. On May 2 the Department of Transportation issued some new rules and regulations regarding the speed trains can travel at through communities, required updated and safer rail cars and more, but most of the proposed changes don’t take effect for many years. Environmental advocates are not hopeful for much quick change given the powerful lobbying efforts of the gas, oil and rail industries.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has previously said there was little the state could do to slow the traffic, but even he is concerned about the possibility of accident; last month the governor’s office issued a complaint after investigating train cars coming into Albany and citing 84 “defects.”

Opposition to new safety rules comes despite that the D.O.T. estimates that if this pace of shipping continues there will be fifteen major accidents every year and one of the enormity of Lac-Megantic (47 people killed) every two years.

“Even if new measures are adopted,” says Roger Downs, an Albany-based attorney with the Sierra Club’s Atlantic Chapter, “it still feels like a half-baked plan to address a wholly inappropriate way to move oil.”