Tag Archives: Bakken crude

Bakken Crude, Crude By Rail, Emergency Readiness & Response, Hazmat notification, Massive increase in crude-by-rail, Rail inspection, Tar sands crude, Union Pacific Railroad

Sacramento Bee: Crude oil train shipments on the rise in California

Repost from The Sacramento Bee
[Editor: Significant quotes: “…UP said new shipments into California from Canada started in late November, running through Idaho, Washington and Oregon…. The trains from Canada likely carry tar sands…. the trains from Canada appear to be traveling on the UP line that runs parallel to Interstate 5 through Northern California, which almost certainly takes them on one of several rail lines through Sacramento…. The new shipments are the first “unit” – or all-oil – trains to enter the Western U.S. from Canada, according to a report in Railway Age.  Crude from Canada has been coming into California sporadically and in smaller shipments for more than a year, Railway Age reported.”  See also Railway Age, UP begins Canada-to-California CBR service. – RS]

New crude oil trains from Canada arrive in California

By Tony Bizjak, 12/08/2014

In a sign that crude oil train shipments to California refineries are on the rise, Union Pacific railroad officials confirmed last week they are now transporting full trains of Canadian oil through Northern California on a route that likely cuts through central Sacramento.

State rail-safety inspectors shadowed the initial trains outside of Bakersfield and reported the mile-long trains were traveling at slow speeds, most likely out of caution, just days after a UP corn train derailed in the Feather River Canyon and spilled feed into the river.

The Canadian imports are the second set of all-oil trains now believed to be coming through the capital on a regular basis. A Bakken oil train comes through midtown Sacramento once or twice a week en route to Richmond in the Bay Area.

Several more oil trains may join them in the next year. Valero Refining Co. has applied for permission to run two 50-car oil trains a day through Sacramento to its plant in Benicia, and Phillips 66 has plans to run oil trains five days a week into its refinery in San Luis Obispo County, some from the north and some via southern routes.

State officials say the Canadian trains are heading to a newly opened transfer station outside Bakersfield, where the crude oil is expected to be piped to coastal refineries. The station, operated by Plains All American Pipeline, a Texas company, is the first of several crude-by-rail facilities planned for California in the next few years. Combined, they would give oil companies the ability to receive up to 22 percent of the state’s imported crude oil by rail instead of by marine shipment.

The increase nationally in train transport of North American crude has helped push international oil prices down dramatically in recent months. It also has raised concerns about the risk of derailments and oil spills. Sacramento officials have called on oil and rail companies and federal regulators to increase safety measures to protect against spills, including requiring stronger tank cars.

Citing safety issues of their own, rail companies have generally declined to disclose where and when rail shipments are happening. But in an email to The Sacramento Bee last week, UP said new shipments into California from Canada started in late November, running through Idaho, Washington and Oregon.

“We expect to run crude trains on this route moving forward,” UP’s Aaron Hunt wrote.

The trains from Canada likely carry tar sands, also called bitumen, which is considered less flammable than the Bakken oil from North Dakota. Bakken oil has been involved in a several major rail explosions in the last few years, including one that killed 47 people in a Canadian town. State safety officials say tar sands, viscous and heavy, are a threat to waterways because the material can sink, making spills hard to clean. A bitumen spill from a ruptured pipe forced closure of 35 miles of the Kalamazoo River in Michigan in 2010 and required $1 billion in cleanup costs over a three-year period.

The state recently called on railroads to provide plans that show that they have the wherewithal to clean oil spills on state waterways. Officials with the state Office of Spill Prevention and Response say tar sands may require particular equipment. “Businesses that transport heavy oils are required to have response resources necessary to address these types of spills,” state spokesman Steve Gonzalez said in an email. “Contractors must be able to locate, contain and clean up a spill that has sunk to the bottom of the water. Some of these responses include sonar, containment boom, dredges and pumps.”

Rail shippers point out that derailment numbers overall have been decreasing nationally for decades and that the industry now runs oil trains at slower speeds at times.

State Public Utilities Commission officials say they sent inspectors out near Bakersfield to monitor the first Canadian oil train, and another train headed to Bakersfield from the south, and noted that the trains were traveling slower than normal.

“The first run is a critical run. If anything goes wrong, we want to be there,” PUC rail safety chief Paul King said. “There might be compliance issues. We want to see how it interfaces with traffic, what speeds they decided to go.”

King said the trains from Canada appear to be traveling on the UP line that runs parallel to Interstate 5 through Northern California, which almost certainly takes them on one of several rail lines through Sacramento. Rail officials have declined to say which lines the oil trains use.

In May, the U.S. Department of Transportation required railroads to notify state officials of large shipments of Bakken oil. Many states ultimately made the information available through public records requests, against the wishes of the railroads. However, railroads are not required to report oil shipments from Canada or other non-Bakken domestic sources.

The new shipments are the first “unit” – or all-oil – trains to enter the Western U.S. from Canada, according to a report in Railway Age. Crude from Canada has been coming into California sporadically and in smaller shipments for more than a year, Railway Age reported.

Bakken Crude, DOT-111, Fracking, Oil conditioning, Oil producers, Oil stabilization, State regulation, Tank car retirement, Train braking systems, Train speed, Volatile gases

Maclean’s: So it turns out Bakken oil is explosive after all

Repost from Maclean’s Magazine

So it turns out Bakken oil is explosive after all

Producers in North Dakota’s Bakken oil fields have been told to make crude is safer before being shipped by rail
By Chris Sorensen, December 10, 2014

Oil TrainsAfter years of insisting oil sucked from North Dakota’s Bakken shale wasn’t inherently dangerous, producers have been ordered to purge the light, sweet crude of highly flammable substances before loading it on railcars and shipping it through towns and cities across the continent.

State regulators said this week that the region’s crude will first need to be treated, using heat or pressure, to remove more volatile liquids and gases. The idea, according to North Dakota’s Mineral Resources Director Lynn Helms, wasn’t to render the oil incapable of being ignited, but merely more stable in preparation for transport.

It’s the latest regulatory response to a frightening series of fiery train crashes that stretches back to the summer of 2013. That’s when a runaway train laden with Bakken crude jumped the tracks in Lac-Mégantic, Que., and killed 47 people in a giant fireball. In the accident’s immediate aftermath, many experts struggled to understand how a train full of crude oil could ignite so quickly and violently. It had never happened before.

Subsequent studies have shown that Bakken crude, squeezed from shale rock under high pressure through a process known as hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” can indeed have a high gas content and vapour pressure, as well as lower flash and boiling points. However, there remains disagreement about whether the levels are unusual for oil extracted from shale, and whether the classifications for shipping it should be changed.

Still, with more than one million barrels of oil being moved by rail from the region each day, regulators have decided to err on the side of caution and implement additional safety measures. For producers, that means buying new equipment that can boil off propane, butane and other volatile natural gases. Under the new rules, the Bakken crude will not be allowed to have a vapour pressure greater than 13.7 lb. per square inch, about the same as for standard automobile gasoline. Regulators estimate that about 80 per cent of Bakken oil already meets these requirements.

The industry isn’t pleased. It continues to argue that Bakken oil is no more dangerous than other forms of light, sweet crude, and is, therefore, being unfairly singled out. It has also warned that removing volatile liquids and gasses from Bakken crude would result in the creation of a highly concentrated, highly volatile product that would still have to be shipped by rail—not to mention additional greenhouse-gas emissions. It goes without saying that meeting the new rules will also cost producers money—at a time when oil prices are falling.

In the meantime, regulators on both sides of the border are taking steps to boost rail safety by focusing on lower speed limits, new brake requirements and plans to phase out older, puncture-prone oil tank cars. Earlier this year, Transport Minister Lisa Raitt said Canada would be “leading the continent” on the phase-out of older DOT-111 tank cars, which have been linked to fiery crashes going back 25 years. There are about 65,000 of the cars in service in North America, about a third of which can be found in Canada.

Bakken Crude, Blast zone, Crude By Rail, Decommissioning, Derailment, DOT-111, Emergency Readiness & Response, Fracking, Hazmat notification, Insurance and liability, Massive increase in crude-by-rail, Oil spill, Rail routing, Tank car retirement, Tar sands crude, Train speed

Ralph Nader: Unsafe and Unnecessary Oil Trains Threaten 25 Million Americans

Repost from The Huffington Post
[Editor: This is a must read, a comprehensive summary by a visionary and influential old-timer.  – RS]

Unsafe and Unnecessary Oil Trains Threaten 25 Million Americans

By Ralph Nader, 12/15/2014
Ralph Nader Headshot
Ralph Nader, consumer advocate, lawyer and author

Back in 1991 the National Transportation Safety Board first identified oil trains as unsafe — the tank cars, specifically ones called DOT-111s, were too thin and punctured too easily, making transport of flammable liquids like oil unreasonably dangerous. As bad as this might sound, at the very least there was not a lot of oil being carried on the rails in 1991.

Now, in the midst of a North American oil boom, oil companies are using fracking and tar sands mining to produce crude in remote areas of the U.S. and Canada. To get the crude to refineries on the coasts the oil industry is ramping up transport by oil trains. In 2008, 9,500 crude oil tank cars moved on US rails. In 2013 the number was more than 400,000! With this rapid growth comes a looming threat to public safety and the environment. No one — not federal regulators or local firefighters — are prepared for oil train derailments, spills and explosions.

Unfortunately, the rapid increase in oil trains has already meant many more oil train disasters. Railroads spilled more oil in 2013 than in the previous 40 years combined.

Trains are the most efficient way to move freight and people. This is why train tracks run through our cities and towns. Our rail system was never designed to move hazardous materials, however; if it was, train tracks would not run next to schools and under football stadiums.

Last summer, environmental watchdog group ForestEthics released a map of North America that shows probable oil train routes. Using Google, anyone can check to see if their home or office is near an oil train route. (Try it out here.)

ForestEthics used census data to calculate that more than 25 million Americans live in the oil train blast zone (that being the one-mile evacuation area in the case of a derailment and fire.) This is clearly a risk not worth taking — oil trains are the Pintos of the rails. Most of these trains are a mile long, pulling 100-plus tank cars carrying more than 3 million gallons of explosive crude. Two-thirds of the tank cars used to carry crude oil today were considered a “substantial danger to life, property, and the environment” by federal rail safety officials back in 1991.

The remaining one-third of the tank cars are not much better — these more “modern” cars are tested at 14 to 15 mph, but the average derailment speed for heavy freight trains is 24 mph. And it was the most “modern” tank cars that infamously derailed, caught fire, exploded and poisoned the river in Lynchburg, Virginia last May. Other derailments and explosions in North Dakota and Alabama made national news in 2014.

The most alarming demonstration of the threat posed by these trains happened in Quebec in July 2013 — an oil train derailed and exploded in the City of Lac Megantic, killing 47 people and burning a quarter of the city to the ground. The fire burned uncontrollably, flowing through the city, into and then out of sewers, and into the nearby river. Firefighters from across the region responded, but an oil fire cannot be fought with water, and exceptionally few fire departments have enough foam flame retardant to control a fire from even a single 30,000 gallon tank car, much less the millions of gallons on an oil train.

Given the damage already done and the threat presented, Canada immediately banned the oldest of these rail cars and mandated a three-year phase-out of the DOT-111s. More needs to be done, but this is a solid first step. Of course, we share the North American rail network — right now those banned trains from Canada may very well be transporting oil through your home town while the Department of Transportation dallies.

The immense public risk these oil trains pose is starting to gain the attention it deserves, but not yet the response. Last summer, the U.S. federal government began the process of writing new safety regulations. Industry has weighed in heavily to protect its interest in keeping these trains rolling. The Department of Transportation, disturbingly, seems to be catering to industry’s needs.

The current draft rules are deeply flawed and would have little positive impact on safety. They leave the most dangerous cars in service for years. Worse yet, the oil industry would get to more than double its tank car fleet before being required to decommission any of the older, more dangerous DOT-111s.

We need an immediate ban on the most dangerous tank cars. We also need to slow these trains down; slower trains mean fewer accidents, and fewer spills and explosions when they do derail. The public and local fire fighters must be notified about train routes and schedules, and every oil train needs a comprehensive emergency response plan for accidents involving explosive Bakken crude and toxic tar sands. In addition, regulations must require adequate insurance. This is the least we could expect from Secretary Anthony Foxx, who travels a lot around the country, and the Department of Transportation.

So far, Secretary Foxx is protecting the oil industry, not ordinary Americans. In fact, Secretary Foxx is meeting with Canadian officials this Thursday, December 18, to discuss oil-by-rail. It is doubtful, considering Canada’s strong first step, that he will be trying to persuade them to adopt even stronger regulations. Will Secretary Foxx ask them to weaken what they have done and put more lives at risk? Time will tell. He has the power, and the mandate, to remove the most dangerous rail cars to protect public safety but he appears to be heading in the opposite direction. Earlier this month ForestEthics and the Sierra Club, represented by EarthJustice, filed a lawsuit against the DOT to require them to fulfill this duty.

Secretary Foxx no doubt has a parade of corporate executives wooing him for lax or no oversight. But he certainly doesn’t want to have a Lac Megantic-type disaster in the U.S. on his watch. It is more possible now than ever before, given the massive increase in oil-by-rail traffic.

Pipelines, such as the Keystone XL, are not the answer either. (Keystone oil would be routed for export to other countries from Gulf ports.) Pipelines can also leak and result in massive damage to the environment as we have seen in the Kalamazoo, MI spill by the Enbridge Corporation. Three years later, $1.2 billion spent, and the “clean up” is still ongoing.

Here’s the reality — we don’t need new pipelines and we don’t need oil by rail. This is “extreme oil,” and if we can’t transport it safely, we can and must say no. Secretary Foxx needs to help make sure 25 million people living in the blastzone are safe and that means significant regulations and restrictions on potentially catastrophic oil rail cars.

Rather than choosing either of these destructive options, we are fortunate to be able to choose safe, affordable cleaner energy and more efficient energy products, such as vehicles and furnaces, instead. That is the future and it is not a distant future — it’s happening right now.

Follow Ralph Nader on Twitter: www.twitter.com/RalphNader
Bakken Crude, Oil conditioning, Volatile gases

First person account: New Bakken volatility standards are pointless

Repost from The Star Tribune, Minneapolis/St. Paul MN
[Editor: Author Lisa Westberg Peters writes with a personal style that is engaging and informative: “I’ve seen Bakken crude oil as it comes out of the ground. It was surprising in several ways: It was almost green, quite fluid and downright fizzy with natural gases. It’s the high gas content that makes Bakken shale oil so explosive.”  – RS]

New Bakken volatility standards are pointless

Lisa Westberg Peters, December 15, 2014
The explosion risk still exists, which emboldens pipeline supporters — but why must our choices be so dismal?
A large swath of Lac-Mégantic, Quebec, was destroyed and 47 people were killed in July 2013 when a train carrying Bakken crude oil derailed, sparking several explosions and forcing the evacuation of up to 1,000 people. Photo: Paul Chiasson • The Canadian Press/AP

I’ve seen Bakken crude oil as it comes out of the ground. It was surprising in several ways: It was almost green, quite fluid and downright fizzy with natural gases. It’s the high gas content that makes Bakken shale oil so explosive.

When the state of North Dakota established new limits on vapor pressure last week for the oil shipped out of the state, my first reaction was relief. Flammable liquids with lower vapor pressures are less volatile. We’ve seen several explosive rail accidents in recent years involving Bakken oil; an oil train derailment last year in the small Quebec town of Lac-Mégantic killed 47 people and flattened its downtown. I was pleased that regulators were addressing this problem.

But when I took a closer look at the numbers, I felt more dismay than relief. Even if oil producers exceed the regulators’ demands — and regulators say they often do — Bakken crude will still be explosive.

The appropriate comparison seems to be gasoline.

Lynn Helms, head of the North Dakota Department of Mineral Resources, said the new vapor pressure standard of 13.7 pounds per square inch (psi) would make Bakken crude no more volatile than the gasoline we put in our cars every day.

In March, an investigation by the Transportation Safety Board of Canada concluded that the Bakken oil in rail cars at Lac-Mégantic was “as volatile as gasoline,” but the vapor pressure was measured at 9 to around 9.5 psi. In other words, the Bakken crude that exploded in Lac-Mégantic was less volatile than what North Dakota regulators are demanding now, and it still exploded.

In a New York Times article last week [North Dakota Regulators Tell Producers to Filter Crude Oil of Flammable Liquids], Clifford Krauss reported: “Once the rules are in force early next year, transported North Dakota crude oil will have a similar volatility to that of automobile gasoline, which should decrease the risk and size of any fire that might occur once a rail car is punctured in an accident, according to state regulators.” His story never mentioned the findings of the Canadian government.

Why wasn’t this New York Times reporter more skeptical of the assurances of North Dakota oil regulators, especially after the recent New York Times revelations about the leniency of regulators toward the oil industry?

The new vapor pressure standard announced last week is pointless. We will still face danger from exploding oil trains.

This disturbing fact tends to encourage pipeline supporters. Pipelines are safer, they say. In the past, oil transported by pipelines has tended not to explode and kill people; instead it spills and contaminates streams, lakes and aquifers. If you value people’s lives over clean water supply, in the short term, pipelines seem better.

But why do we have to make such lousy choices to keep our domestic energy boom rolling — to keep workers working and our dream of energy independence alive? Let’s do everything we can to encourage the other domestic energy boom, the wind and solar boom, that has already begun and that survives today despite many obstacles, including national policies that still encourage fossil fuel, yesterday’s energy source. If we were to place a price on carbon tomorrow, we would not need as many pipelines and we would be able to reduce the number of oil trains passing through our neighborhoods.

Climate experts urge us to leave much of the world’s remaining fossil fuel, including Bakken crude, in the ground. If we do as they advise, we will disrupt job markets and be forced to rethink the way we do almost everything. Why should we voluntarily face such disruption? One very good reason: We already face the prospect of pervasive disruption posed by a changing climate. It’s far preferable to take well-designed and systematic measures to control disruption than let disruption control us.

Lisa Westberg Peters is the author of “Fractured Land: The Price of Inheriting Oil” (Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2014). She lives in Minneapolis with her family.