Repost from USA Today [Editor: Nothing new here, but good that mainstream publications are taking notice. – RS]
Rail deliveries of U.S. oil continue to surge
Wendy Koch, August 28, 2014
(Photo: Connor Lake AP)
Amid a boom in U.S. oil production, the amount of crude oil and refined petroleum products moved by rail continues to climb.
There were 459,550 carloads of oil and petroleum products transported during the first seven months of this year, up 9% from the same period in 2013, according to the Association of American Railroads.
More than half of these carloads carried oil, moving 759,000 barrels of crude per day and accounting for 8% of U.S. oil production.
The surge in oil trains began in mid-2011. At that time, weekly carloads of oil and petroleum products averaged about 7,000. In July, they reached nearly 16,000, according to the AAR.
“The increase in oil volumes transported by rail reflects rising U.S. crude oil production, which reached an estimated 8.5 million barrels per day in June for the first time since July 1986,” the U.S. Energy Information Administration reported Thursday.
The use of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing or fracking has made it possible to extract huge amounts of oil from underground shale deposits. The Bakken Shale, mostly in North Dakota, accounts for much of the growth in U.S. oil production. One of every eight U.S.-produced barrels comes from North Dakota, now the second-largest oil producing state.
Between 60% and 70% of the state’s oil was moved by rail to refineries during the first half of 2014, according to the North Dakota Pipeline Authority.
Spurred by this surge in oil-carrying trains and several recent tragic accidents, the Obama administration proposed stricter rules last month for tank cars that transport flammable fuels.
The Department of Transportation proposal will require the phaseout, within two years, of tens of thousands of tank cars unless they are retrofitted to meet new safety standards. It will also require speed limits, better braking and testing of volatile liquids, including oil. It will require that cars constructed after October 2015 have thicker steel.
The DOT proposed rule, which will take months to finalize after a 60-day comment period, applies to shipments with at least 20 rail cars carrying flammable fuels, including ethanol.
In May, an oil-carrying freight train derailed in Lynchburg, Va., spilling 30,000 gallons of oil into the James River. Last year in Lac-Megantic, Quebec, an oil train exploded and killed 47 people.
By April Baumgarten, Forum News Service, August 25, 2014
A train carrying crude oil tankers travels on the railroad bridge over the Missouri River on Aug. 16 in Bismarck. Dustin Monke/Forum News Service
DICKINSON, N.D. – What can be done to keep trains from becoming “Bakken bombs?”
It’s a question on the minds of many North Dakota residents and leaders, so much that some are calling on the state Industrial Commission to require oil companies to use technology to reduce the crude’s volatility. The words are less than kind.
“Every public official in America who doesn’t want their citizens incinerated will be invited to Bismarck to chew on the commissioners of the NDIC for failing to regulate the industry they regulate,” Ron Schalow of Fargo wrote in a Facebook message.
A train carrying Bakken crude derailed and exploded July 6, 2013, in Lac-Megantic, Quebec, killing 47 people. Another oil train crashed into a derailed soybean train on Dec. 30 near Casselton, N.D. No one was killed.
Schalow has started a campaign to require oil companies that drill in North Dakota to use stabilizers, a technology used in Texas to take natural gas liquids off crude to make it safer to ship. His online petition demands the Industrial Commission to force oil companies to remove all explosive natural gas liquids from crude before shipping it by rail. More than 340 people have signed the petition as of Saturday.
Schalow declined an interview, referring instead to his petition and Facebook page titled “The Bomb Train Buck Stops With North Dakota.”
Throughout North Dakota, residents have called on the state’s government to prevent future disasters like these, but some leaders say implementing stabilizers could cause more problems.
“Now you have to pipe from every one of these wells or you have to find a way to get it to this centralized location to be refined,” state Agricultural Commissioner Doug Goehring said. “That creates huge problems in itself.”
There is a difference between conditioning and stabilization, said Lynn Helms, the state’s Department of Mineral Resources director.
Oil conditioning is typically done at well sites in North Dakota, he said. The gases are first removed from crude. Then the water and hydrocarbons are removed with a heater treater. The crude oil is then put into a storage tank below atmospheric pressure, which reduces the volatility. Those gases can then be flared or transported to a gas processing plant.
“If crude oil is properly conditioned at the wellsite, it is stable and safe for transportation,” Helms said.
Oil that hasn’t been properly conditioned at the wellsite can be stabilized, Helms said, but that would include an industrial system of pipelines and processing plants.
Valerus, a company based in Houston, manufactures stabilizers for oil companies across the country, including in Texas, West Virginia and Canada. It’s a technology Texas has used at the wellhead for drilling the Eagle Ford shale since the early 2000s, said Bill Bowers, vice president of production equipment at Valerus. Recently, a centralized system with pipelines has been developed to transport the natural gas liquid safely.
“Most of that stabilization takes place at a centralized facility now,” he said. “There could be 100 wells flowing into one facility.”
The Railroad Commission of Texas has one rule that Helms has found regarding stabilization, he said. Rule 3.36 of the Texas Oil and Gas Division states operators shall provide safeguards to protect the general public from the harmful effects of hydrogen sulfide. This can include stabilizing liquid hydrocarbons
.Helms added he could not find any other rule requiring companies to use stabilizers, but the rule had an impact indirectly, Bowers said.
“I think what was happening is these trucking companies, either for regulation or just safety purposes, would not transport the crude if it was not stabilized,” Bowers said.
The process is relatively simple, he added.
“All we are really talking about is heating the crude, getting some of the more volatile compounds to evaporate and leaving the crude less volatile,” Bowers said.
The Industrial Commission has asked for public input on 10 items that could be used to condition oil. Though stabilization is not directly listed, it could be discussed under “other field operation methods to effectively reduce the light hydrocarbons in crude.”
The commission will hear testimony on Tuesday, Sept. 23, at the Department of Mineral Resources’ office in Bismarck. Written comment may be submitted before 5 p.m. Monday, Sept. 22.
New rules in North Dakota would regulate conditioning at well sites.
The hearing was brought on by a study from the North Dakota Petroleum Council and discussions held with U.S. Secretary of Transportation Anthony Foxx and Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz regarding transportation issues.
Installing equipment at the wellhead for conditioning oil takes several weeks, Helms said. Stabilization, on the other hand, could take more than a year to install equipment – if not longer.
Helms said he couldn’t comment on the economic process.
“I do know that a large-scale industrial process would have a big imprint,” Helms said. “It would really exasperate our transportation problems because tens of thousands of barrels of oil would have to be trucked or piped to (a processing plant) and from it.”
Since there is a centralized system in Texas, companies can make a profit off the natural gas liquids. In North Dakota, companies would have to stabilize at the wellhead before pipelines are put in place.
“Given their preference, they won’t buy this equipment,” Bowers said. “They really don’t want to do it.”
There is no pipeline infrastructure to transport natural gas liquids from wellsites, meaning it would have to be trucked or shipped by rail. That could be more dangerous than shipping oil without stabilizing it, Goehring and Helms said.
“By themselves, they are more volatile and more dangerous than the crude oil with them in it,” Helms said. “The logical thing to do is to properly condition them at the wellsite.”
The crude could also shrink in volume, along with profits, Bowers said.
“It seems to me that in the Bakken people are quite happy with the arrangement,” he added. “They don’t believe necessarily that stabilization will change the safety picture.”
Schalow has criticized the Industrial Commission for not acting sooner, stating officials have had 10 years to address the issue.
Goehring said he was made aware of the process recently.
“I don’t believe anybody is withholding information or is aware of anything, nothing diabolical,” Goehring said.
Officials agreed that the process needs to be dealt with on multiple levels, including oversight on railroad safety. Public Service Commissioner Julie Fedorchak outlined a proposal on Thursday for a state-run rail safety program. If approved, the Public Service Commission would hire three staff members for the program.
The commission has been working on the proposal since before the Casselton derailment.
“I share (Schalow’s) concern about having a safe method of transportation, and I think everyone does,” Fedorchak said. “How we get there is the challenge and I think there is a number of different steps. I don’t think there is one solution.”
Many trains carrying Bakken crude travel through Fargo, where Schalow and Democratic Sen. Tim Mathern live.
Mathern follows Schalow’s Facebook page and said he did so out of his concern for transporting oil safely.
“My perspective is that we must preserve and protect our quality of life today and in the future,” Mathern said. “We must be careful that we don’t do kind of a wholesale of colonization of our resources in sending them out. … It’s almost like how do we make sure that we don’t have an industrial waste site as a state?
“In many of our larger cities, we have a section of town that is kind of an industrial waste site. Eventually, someone has to clean that up. Eventually, that is a cost to society, and I am concerned that we don’t let that happen to North Dakota.”
Mathern said safely transporting oil is no longer a western North Dakota or even a state issue; it’s a national issue that must be taken seriously because the oil is being transported throughout the country.
“There is enough responsibility to go around for everybody, including policy makers,” he said. “It’s not just one industry; it’s many industries. It includes the public sector. It includes governors and legislators, and people that are supposed to be attentive to citizens, and to be attentive to the future. We all have responsibility in this.
“This has worldwide consequences. This is an oil find that even affects the balance of power, even politically.”
Mathern said he doesn’t know what Schalow’s motivation is, but it isn’t just Schalow raising the questions.
“I don’t think this is a matter of blaming oil.” Mathern said. “This is a matter of being respectful for our citizens and being a good steward of this resource and a good steward of our future.”
Public comment
Residents unable to attend the North Dakota Industrial Commission on oil conditioning practices set for 9 a.m. on Tuesday, Sept. 23, in Bismarck may submit written comments to brkadrmas@nd.gov. Comments must be submitted by 5 p.m. CDT on Monday, Sept. 22.
“The most recent edition of Inspire magazine, March 2014, the online, English-language propaganda publication of [Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula], presents a full-page collage depicting varied images…in order to construct an explosive device,” reads Carbaugh’s affidavit.
“Among these images are a derailed passenger train and a partly covered note paper listing cities in the [U.S.] as well as the terms ‘Dakota’ and ‘Train crude oil.’”
Carbaugh also cited Osama bin Laden, the late Al-Qaeda international ring-leader, in his affidavit.
“Among the materials seized in the May 1, 2011, raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, were notes indicating interest in ‘tipping’ or ‘toppling’ trains — that is causing their derailment,” Carbaugh wrote.
Osama Bin Laden Compound Diagram; Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons
Apperson says both lawsuits were redundant because “we reiterated [to both companies] that we would not release the documents under state open records law until the court challenge is resolved.”
MDE filed a response arguing such in July 25 legal motions issued to CSX and Norfolk Southern.
Big Rail has used a similar approach in New Jersey, another state that has not yet publicly-disclosed oil-by-rail route information.
Lee Moore, a New Jersey Department of Law and Public Safety spokesman, explained why to The Record.
“Releasing all of the records, which include the rail lines on which Bakken crude oil is being transported, would pose a homeland security risk,” said Moore.
“Clocks and Windows”
William Larkin Jr., a Republican member of the New York Senate, believes the argument put forward in both Maryland and New Jersey is flawed on its face.
Photo Credit: Office of NY Sen. William J. Larkin, Jr. (R)
“I feel that both the U.S. Department of Transportation and a number of critics seemed to have missed the point, at least the larger point,” Larkin Jr. told the Poughkeepsie Journal on July 20. “[People] already know which rail lines oil companies are utilizing. Clocks and windows provide this information.”
Despite holes in its narrative about national security risks associated with disclosure of oil-by-rail routes, one measure some companies have taken is to create citizen volunteer security groups.
Norfolk Southern has a website called “Protect the Line,” in which they ask citizens to “Join the Force.” And BNSF has “Citizens for Rail Security,” which declares, “Communities play a key role in ensuring America’s rail network remains safe from terrorism and criminal activity.”
Photo Credit: “Citizens for Rail Security” Website Screenshot
The contradiction is readily apparent: communities can volunteer to keep the railroads safe, but they are not allowed to get information from the railroads about what they are keeping their communities safe from in the first place.
TSA: Asleep at the Wheel
The Transportation Safety Administration (TSA) oversees and implements rail safety as it pertains to preventing terrorist threats and attacks.
However, records obtained via a recent Freedom of Information request by EnergyWire reveal TSA is asleep at the wheel in this sphere. Worse, it has been for years.
“[A] Freedom of Information Act request from EnergyWire revealed that the agency never followed through with regulations despite an August 2008 deadline,” explains the story. “That means TSA neither keeps railroads’ security plans on file nor reviews them in any standardized fashion.”
It all comes down to priorities. According to EnergyWire’s investigation, a major funding gap exists between security for surface transportation (like rail) and aviation security.
“TSA’s budget for fiscal 2012 set aside $5.25 billion for aviation security, while devoting $135 million to surface transportation security across all modes,” wrote EnergyWire.
When looked at on the whole, a sober reality arises.
That is, while Big Rail trumpets terrorism threat risks in the legal arena to skirt transparency, the industry has concurrently done little to halt the very terrorism threats it claims a desire to stop.
Repost from Poughkeepsie Journal [Editor: Significant quote: “The U.S. Department of Transportation acknowledged in its proposed rule that an another accident isn’t a question of if, but when. “Absent this proposed rule, we predict about 15 mainline derailments for 2015, falling to a prediction of about 5 mainline derailments annually by 2034,” the department’s proposal stated. Reviews and lawsuits mean it could be years before the rule is implemented.” – RS]
Oil train risks push communities to prepare for worst
Khurram Saeed | August 21, 2014
The home of Doris Quinones is less than 100 feet away from the CSX railroad track, on which as many as 4 oil trains pass by every day, not to mention freight trains carrying other hazardous chemicals. An oil train is seen passing from the yard of Doris Quinones, July 31, 2014 in Haverstraw.(Photo: Tania Savayan/The Journal News)
Little black bullets.
That’s what Doris Quinones calls the dozens of outdated tank cars filled with crude oil that rumble yards away from her Haverstraw home every day.
One train hauling oil can have up to 100 cars, and as many as 30 oil trains pass through Rockland each week on the way to refineries. That’s twice the number from just six months ago as demand continues to grow for the volatile crude oil drawn from the Bakken region in North Dakota.
Those trains also pass through Ulster County.
In Highland, the trains roll past a restaurant and a Hudson River waterfront park that is being outfitted with a new deep-water dock for tour boats.
Ulster County’s vulnerable infrastructure includes drinking water intakes for Port Ewen and the Town of Lloyd.
A 100-car oil train can carry 3 million gallons of crude oil, and because so many more are on the rails, the number of derailments and accidents is rising.
The oil trains, which do not travel on a set schedule, roll through four of Rockland’s five towns on CSX Railroad’s River Line. Fully loaded trains run north to south, less than a mile from Helen Hayes Hospital in West Haverstraw, Lake DeForest reservoir in Clarkstown, the Palisades Center in West Nyack and Dominican College in Blauvelt, not to mention dozens of neighborhoods, scores of schools and day care centers and right past key highways like the Thruway.
Given her proximity to the tracks, Quinones said a derailed train would “land in my living room.”
“We’re all realists,” Quinones said recently in her backyard, where she sometimes lounges in her swimming pool and tends to her cucumbers. “They got to get something somewhere. It’s got to go on the freight train but they got to take extra measures even if it costs them more money.”
The oil trains are hard to miss, and the safety issues surrounding them, particularly their tank cars, have become harder to ignore. There have been a number of fiery explosions and accidents since 2013 that have caused officials at all levels to look closer at the dangers of shipping oil by rail.
Just over a year ago, 47 people died when an unattended oil train derailed and exploded in Lac-Megantic, Quebec. Rockland had a close call in December when an oil train transporting 99 empty tank cars from Philadelphia to North Dakota hit a truck stuck on the crossing in West Nyack, sending the truck’s driver to the hospital.
Planning for worst
Peter Miller, chief of the Highland Fire District, said firefighters took part in a drill in Kingston on May 30, along with other fire departments. The drill was sponsored by the Ulster County Emergency Services Department and CSX.
He said the district’s response plans are constantly being updated, particularly now that the Bakken crude is rolling through.
“We upgrade our training and our response plans to cover what we would do, depending on where the incident is,” he said.
Even as federal transportation officials are proposing more stringent requirements for tank cars to make them safer, Rockland’s first responders are planning for nightmare scenarios and how to evacuate thousands of people quickly in a catastrophe or have them stay where they are.
“Our job is to really plan for the worst,” said Chris Jensen, Rockland County’s hazardous materials coordinator.
Rockland emergency officials are finishing the evacuation map for residents and businesses within a mile of the River Line.
It covers a mile on either side of the rail line, broken into half-mile sections, from Bear Mountain to the New Jersey border.
Gordon Wren Jr., director of Rockland’s Office of Fire and Emergency Services, said the map “allows us to make the decisions quicker, faster.”
“Do you evacuate or not? If so, how far?” Wren said.
The map identifies schools, day care centers, nursing homes and senior housing, among other landmarks.
“(A police officer) can look at that and say, ‘Let’s get the people out of here,’ ” said Dan Greeley, assistant director of the county Office of Fire and Emergency Services. “It happens instantaneously.”
The U.S. Department of Transportation acknowledged in its proposed rule that an another accident isn’t a question of if, but when.
“Absent this proposed rule, we predict about 15 mainline derailments for 2015, falling to a prediction of about 5 mainline derailments annually by 2034,” the department’s proposal stated. Reviews and lawsuits mean it could be years before the rule is implemented.
In 2008, just 9,500 carloads of crude oil moved by rail. Last year, the figure exceeded 400,000, the Association of American Railroads said.
Rail industry officials note that 99.9 percent of all hazardous rail shipments reach their destinations safely and that only rail has afforded the nation the flexibility to move large volumes of oil so quickly and freely, letting the United States wean itself off foreign oil.
Susan Christopherson, chair of Cornell University’s city and regional planning department, said though pipelines are safer, oil shippers from western Canada and the Bakken shale region prefer trains because they provide flexibility from different points of origin to refineries nationwide.
The problem, she said, is the Federal Railroad Administration has “little capacity” to regulate the rail industry or monitor rail infrastructure safety.
“Costs for emergency preparedness have to be absorbed by state and local government,” Christopherson wrote in an email. “There is little or no compensation for these costs, which can be significant.”
Under Gov. Andrew Cuomo, the state has become increasingly proactive, carrying out inspection blitzes of rail yards and leveling fines.
‘Witches’ brew’
The River Line, part of CSX’s rail network, runs from outside Albany. In February, the railroad told The Journal News that two oil trains used the line daily, or 14 a week. By June, the railroad fixed the number of trains hauling 1 million gallons or more of Bakken crude at 15 to 30, or up to four each day, according to documents it had to file with the state.
CSX spokesman Gary Sease said there have been incremental increases in crude oil volume over the past several weeks with likely more to come. The railroad recently completed double-tracking work in north Rockland to increase capacity on the track.
“It is a result of market conditions and can fluctuate,” Sease wrote in an email.
“We see customers investing in additional crude oil terminals over the next couple of years.”
Bakken crude oil is just the latest dangerous substance to travel the line, Jensen said. Toxic substances such as chlorine, ethanol, propane and vinyl chloride have moved on the former West Shore line for decades.
“It’s a witches’ brew of stuff,” Jensen said.
But one big difference is the amount of Bakken crude that passes through Ulster, Rockland and, for that matter, 15 other counties in New York.
Aside from CSX, Canadian Pacific Railway hauls Bakken crude from the Midwest to Albany, with an average of one train a day with a million-plus gallons.
In May, CSX began a first responders training program by bringing equipment and experts to communities to teach them about incidents involving crude oil. More than 1,000 people have been trained, he said.
That’s a good start but more needs to be done, said Jerry DeLuca, executive director and CEO of the New York State Association of Fire Chiefs.
“You don’t fight an oil fire with water. We need to have foam and a lot of it,” said DeLuca, whose group represents more than 11,000 professional and volunteer fire chiefs. “It’s not something we utilize every day, so you have to be trained.”
Poughkeepsie Journal staff writer John Ferro contributed to this report.
