Tag Archives: Crude by Rail

Bakken Crude, Crude By Rail, Derailment, Emergency Readiness & Response, Explosion, Federal Regulation (U.S.), Oil stabilization, State regulation, Volatility

National Public Radio: Fiery Oil-Train Derailments Prompt Calls For Less Flammable Oil

Repost from National Public Radio
[Editor: An excellent overview of efforts to regulate the volatility of Bakken Crude.  Audio appears first below, followed by text version.  Significant quote: “Energy economist Philip Verleger, says the resistance is about money. ‘The industry never wants to take steps which increase the cost of production, even if it’s in the best interests of everybody,’ he says. Verleger says the opposition to proposed safety rules is short-sighted, and that the industry could actually hurt itself if there’s another serious incident. ‘I think the movement of crude oil by rail is one accident away from being terminated,’ Verleger says.”  – RS]

Fiery Oil-Train Derailments Prompt Calls For Less Flammable Oil

by Emily Guerin,

A fireball goes up at the site of an oil train derailment in Casselton, N.D., in this Dec. 30 photo. The fiery crash left an ominous cloud over the town and led some residents to evacuate.
A fireball goes up at the site of an oil train derailment in Casselton, N.D., in this Dec. 30 photo. The fiery crash left an ominous cloud over the town and led some residents to evacuate. Bruce Crummy/AP

Once a day, a train carrying crude oil from North Dakota’s Bakken oil fields rumbles through Bismarck, N.D., just a stone’s throw from a downtown park.

The Bakken fields produce more than 1 million barrels of oil a day, making the state the nation’s second-largest oil producer after Texas. But a dearth of pipelines means that most of that oil leaves the state by train — trains that run next to homes and through downtowns.

After several fiery accidents, oil companies are under pressure to make their oil less explosive before loading it onto rail cars. But oil companies say rules requiring those modifications will create more problems than they solve.

The trains passing through Bismarck worry Lynn Wolff, an activist with the environmental group Dakota Resource Council. “Last December we got the wake-up call,” he says. “That was the explosion and derailment of an oil train in Casselton, N.D.”

Wolff is referring to a crash in farmland just outside the small town of Casselton. No one was hurt, but the crash could have been deadly had it happened in town.

This summer, Bismarck officials ran through a simulated oil train derailment, with responders operating on the assumption that some of the town’s buildings would be devastated or destroyed, says Gary Stockert, Bismarck’s emergency manager. “We exercised with the assumption that we had over 60 or 70 casualties.”

Around the country, other cities and towns with oil train traffic are preparing for similar disasters.

In neighboring Minnesota, Gov. Mark Dayton “is concerned primarily about the safety of people along oil train routes, and in particular about the fact that this is a very volatile oil,” says Dave Christianson, an official with the Minnesota Department of Transportation.

Dayton has joined activists in asking North Dakota to force oil companies to “stabilize” the oil — to make it less explosive by separating out the flammable liquids.

Last month, North Dakota Gov. Jack Dalrymple convened a public hearing on the idea. Keith Lilie, an operations and maintenance manager for Statoil, which has a big presence in the Bakken, testified in front of a room full of oilmen in suits and cowboy boots who came to the hearing from places like Oklahoma City and Houston.

Lilie said he opposes having to build expensive tanks to heat the oil and separate out flammable liquids, like butane.

“Statoil believes the current conditioning of crude oil is sufficient for safely transporting Bakken crude oil by truck, rail and pipeline,” he said.

Eric Bayes, general manager of Oasis Petroleum’s operations in the Bakken, also testified. He asked what companies are supposed to do with those explosive liquids once they’re separated from the oil.

The stabilization process, he says, would “create another product stream you have no infrastructure in place for.”

But energy economist Philip Verleger, says the resistance is about money. “The industry never wants to take steps which increase the cost of production, even if it’s in the best interests of everybody,” he says.

Verleger says the opposition to proposed safety rules is short-sighted, and that the industry could actually hurt itself if there’s another serious incident. “I think the movement of crude oil by rail is one accident away from being terminated,” Verleger says.

Activist Lynn Wolff supports new rules that would make the oil less explosive, and says such regulation would protect people beyond North Dakota. “These bomb trains have been in Virginia and Alabama and blown up there as well,” he says.

Federal officials in Washington are also considering ways to make oil trains safer, such as strengthening tank cars.

As for making the oil leaving the Bakken less flammable, officials in North Dakota say they’ll make a decision by the end of the year.

This story was reported with Inside Energy, a public media collaboration focusing on America’s energy issues.

Air Quality, Bakken Crude, Bridge safety, Cap-and-trade, Crude By Rail, Earthquake, Massive increase in crude-by-rail, Rail accidents, Risk Assessment, Tar sands crude

Green coalition sues Kern County over DEIR failures

Repost from Courthouse News
[Editor: Significant quote: “They claim that the EIR’s analysis of greenhouse gas emissions is ‘riddled with flaws’ because instead of discussing mitigation measures to curb emissions, it assumed that the refinery’s emissions will be ‘reduced to zero’ by participating in the state’s cap-and-trade program, and thus concluded that ‘these emissions are not significant.'”    – RS]

Greens Fight SoCal Tar Sands Oil Project

By Rebekah Kearn, October 13, 2014

BAKERSFIELD, Calif. (CN) – Kern County illegally approved expansion of a local refinery that will let it transport and process 70,000 barrels of crude oil a day, environmentalists claim in court.

The Association of Irritated Residents, the Center for Biological Diversity and the Sierra Club sued the Kern County Board of Supervisors and the Kern County Planning and Community Development Department, on Oct. 9 in Superior Court.

Alon U.S.A. Energy, of Texas, and its subsidiary Paramount Petroleum Corp. are named as real parties in interest.

“The lawsuit challenges Kern County’s unlawful approval of a massive oil refinery and rail project that will further harm air quality in the San Joaquin Valley and subject residents in several states to the catastrophic risks of a derailment involving scores of tanker cars filled with explosive Bakken crude oil,” plaintiffs’ attorney Elizabeth Forsyth, with Earthjustice, told Courthouse News.

Bakken crude is from northern Montana and North Dakota, Manitoba and Saskatchewan. Much of it is extracted by fracking, or hydraulic fracturing.

“The San Joaquin Valley is already overburdened by industrial pollution,” Forsyth said. “Kern County officials should put the health of their residents over the profits of oil companies.”

The groups claim the county’s approval of the Alon Bakersfield Refinery Crude Oil Flexibility Project and its allegedly inadequate environmental impact report violated the California Environmental Quality Act.

The project quintuples the Alon Bakersfield Refinery’s capacity to import crude oil, “from 40 tank cars per day to 200 tank cars per day, or up to 63.1 million barrels of crude per year,” the 27-page complaint states.

“This influx of cheap, mid-continent crudes, including Canadian tar sands crude and Bakken crude from North Dakota, would allow the shuttered refinery to reopen and run at full capacity, processing 70,000 barrels of crude oil per day,” according to the complaint.

“The project’s massive ramp-up in oil transport and processing poses alarming health and safety threats to the residents of Bakersfield and to those who live along the crude-by-rail route. Restarting the refinery will significantly increase harmful air pollution that will only exacerbate the poor air quality and respiratory illnesses that plague San Joaquin Valley communities already unfairly burdened with industrial pollution.”

Bakken crude oil is “highly volatile,” and shipping it across several states “over treacherous and poorly maintained mountain passages” without adequate safety regulations will expose everyone who lives along the shipping route to the risks of derailment, the environmentalists say.

Trains carrying Bakken crude have derailed and exploded, including the July 2013 disaster in Lac-Mégantic, Canada, which killed 47 people and leveled half of downtown Lec-Mégantic, according to the complaint.

Bakersfield, pop. 464,000, between Los Angeles and Fresno, is the ninth-largest city in California. Kern County produces more oil than any other county in the state, and boasts the fourth largest agricultural output in the country.

Its air quality is abysmal. “Bakersfield has the country’s third most polluted air, according to the American Lung Association, and one in six children in the Valley will be diagnosed with asthma before age 18,” Forsyth told Courthouse News.

Kern County’s notoriously poor air quality causes approximately 1,500 premature deaths each year, and exposure to toxic air pollution racks up “$3 billion to $6 billion in health costs and lost productivity annually,” according to the complaint.

Several schools, residential neighborhoods and a hospital are only a few miles away from the Alon Bakersfield refinery. It is 1,000 feet from the Kern River Parkway, where people hike, walk, and ride bikes along trails and through parks, according to the complaint.

The refinery shut its doors in 2008 when its owner filed for bankruptcy. After sitting inactive for two years, it was bought by Alon in 2010 and “refashioned to convert intermediate vacuum gas oil into finished products,” but stopped all refining operations in December 2012 when the price of local feedstock rose, the complaint states.

In August 2012, Paramount submitted proposed modifications to the county that would let the refinery use the Burlington Northern Santa Fe rail line to bring in 5.5 million gallons of oil per day.

“The five-fold expansion of the terminal’s unloading capacity, from 40 tank cars per day to over 200 tank cars per day, is the largest crude-by-rail project in California, twice the size of the next largest project,” the complaint states.

The Kern County Board of Supervisors approved the environmental impact report on Sept. 9 this year.

But the plaintiffs claim the environmental study “obfuscates and underestimates” the significant impacts posed by the project and ignores the effects that rail transport of Bakken crude will have on air pollution.

“The EIR severely underestimates the safety risks of this project through sloppy math and an incomplete analysis,” the complaint states. “Based on simple mathematical error, the EIR calculates the risk of a train accident involving an oil spill is unlikely to occur within the project’s 30-year lifetime. Correcting this error, however, results in a risk of accident involving an oil spill once every 30 years.”

California has a high risk for catastrophic accidents because many of its 5,000 to 7,000 railroad bridges are over 100 years old and are not routinely inspected by any state or federal agency, and the rail lines run through “hazard areas” such as earthquake faults and densely populated cities, the complaint states.

Kern County is especially vulnerable because “the freight rail track runs through the Tehachapi Mountain, an area identified by the California Interagency Rail Safety Working Group as a ‘high hazard area.’ The rail track includes steep grades, extreme track curvature, and a single track through the majority of the corridor. The elevation loss of this corridor is approximately 3,600 feet from Tehachapi to Bakersfield, and the grade is so steep that it includes the famous ‘Tehachapi loop’ where the railroad line must loop back under itself to make the grade,” the complaint adds.

The plaintiffs say the project also threatens to further pollute the air quality of a region “already plagued by the worst air quality in the nation.”

“Refining Bakken crude emits high levels of volatile organic compound emissions that lead to ozone pollution, which in turn causes respiratory illnesses such as asthma,” Forsyth told Courthouse News.

“The refining of tar sands crude, which is far dirtier than local crudes, will result in higher emissions of greenhouse gases, nitrogen, sulfur and toxic metals,” she added.

Moreover, restarting the refinery and processing 60 million barrels of fossil fuels a year will elevate greenhouse gas emissions in the region and interfere with California’s goal of reducing such emissions, the groups say.

They claim the EIR’s analysis of greenhouse gas emissions is “riddled with flaws” because instead of discussing mitigation measures to curb emissions, it assumed that the refinery’s emissions will be “reduced to zero” by participating in the state’s cap-and-trade program, and thus concluded that “these emissions are not significant.”

“The EIR also unlawfully underestimates greenhouse gas emissions, ignoring emissions from the combustion of end products produced from the imported crude,” the complaint states.

After Kern County released an initial study of the project in September 2013, the Air District commented that using 2007 as the baseline to analyze impacts to air quality was improper because the refinery had not refined crude since 2008, according to the complaint.

The groups say the draft environmental report released for public comment on May 22 this year did not correct this error.

“The draft EIR also omitted fundamental information necessary to evaluate the EIR’s conclusions, including underlying assumptions and calculations for the EIR’s emissions analysis, data concerning the properties of Bakken crude, and an objective description of the project’s crude slate,” the complaint states.

On June 13, the groups’ attorneys asked for the information not included in the draft report and an extension to the 45-day comment period, but the county denied both requests.

When the county issued its final EIR in August, the groups say, they objected to “new disclosures that the public had not had a chance to review,” including its flawed analysis of the probability of a train accident, and demanded that it be revised.

Several prominent environmental scientists submitted comments criticizing the report’s treatment of toxic air emissions and its failure to include “emergency flaring events” in emissions calculations, but the county ignored their input and approved the report 13 days after it was released, the complaint states.

Kern County Counsel Theresa Goldner defended the project.

“The Kern County Board of Supervisors carefully and thoughtfully considered the EIR and all public comments and approved the report after a full and complete public process,” Goldner told Courthouse News.

“We will vigorously oppose this action.”

Paramount did not immediately return requests for comment.

The environmentalists seek declaratory judgment that Kern County violated CEQA by authorizing the refinery expansion project without performing adequate environmental analysis.

They ask that the project approvals and the environmental impact report be vacated until the defendants prepare a new environmental study that complies with CEQA.

They also want an injunction preventing the defendants from carrying out any part of the project until they fulfill all of the CEQA requirements.

They are represented by Earthjustice attorneys Elizabeth Forsyth and co-counsel Wendy Park of San Francisco.

BP Cherry Point, CPC-1232, Crude By Rail, DOT-111, Tank car design

ForestEthics: switch to newer rail cars for crude still not safe

Repost from ABC News
[Editor: Significant quote: “Matt Krogh, of the group ForestEthics, which has sued the U.S. Department of Transportation over the shipment of volatile crude oil in older railroad tank cars, told The Associated Press on Saturday that there’s little evidence the newer tank cars will truly prevent explosive spills. He argued that the newer cars are tested at slower speeds than the speed at which most derailments occur, and he noted that it was one of the CPC-1232s that exploded in a fireball during a derailment in Lynchburg, Virginia, in April Krogh called switching to the newer cars ‘a red herring.’   ¶  ‘It’s a marginal improvement, but it’s nowhere near safe,’ he said. ‘They’re essentially grasping at straws to convince people that they can do it safely. I don’t think you can safely and profitably run trains of crude.'”  – RS]

Refinery Switching to Newer Rail Cars for Crude

BELLINGHAM, Wash. — Oct 11, 2014

A refinery in northwest Washington state says it will no longer accept any volatile North Dakota crude oil unless it arrives on newer-model tank cars.

By the first week of October, the BP Cherry Point facility had stopped using pre-2011 standard tank cars, known as DOT-111 cars, for the shipments, The Bellingham Herald reported ( http://is.gd/XmHxHN ).

The change comes amid public concern about the safety of shipping crude by train. Since 2008, derailments of oil trains in the U.S. and Canada have seen the older 70,000-gallon tank cars break open and ignite on multiple occasions, resulting in huge fireballs. A train carrying Bakken-formation crude from North Dakota in the older tanks crashed in a Quebec town last year, killing 47 people.

The National Transportation Safety Board, which recommended upgraded regulations for crude oil and ethanol cars in 2011, is working on updating rail safety standards and could require companies to phase out the DOT-111 cars for shipping crude oil during the next couple of years

Cherry Point was already using newer, safer tank cars to receive about 60 percent of its crude oil, but expedited the switch to the newer cars in response to community concerns, BP spokesman Bill Kidd said. The refinery now uses a fleet of about 700 newer cars, called CPC-1232s.

The newer cars have thicker shells, head shields on both ends and improved valve protection.

But Matt Krogh, of the group ForestEthics, which has sued the U.S. Department of Transportation over the shipment of volatile crude oil in older railroad tank cars, told The Associated Press on Saturday that there’s little evidence the newer tank cars will truly prevent explosive spills. He argued that the newer cars are tested at slower speeds than the speed at which most derailments occur, and he noted that it was one of the CPC-1232s that exploded in a fireball during a derailment in Lynchburg, Virginia, in April.

Krogh called switching to the newer cars “a red herring.”

“It’s a marginal improvement, but it’s nowhere near safe,” he said. “They’re essentially grasping at straws to convince people that they can do it safely. I don’t think you can safely and profitably run trains of crude.”

Trains carrying Bakken oil from North Dakota have been supplying Washington refineries at Tacoma, Anacortes and Cherry Point. Oil-train export terminals are proposed at Vancouver and Grays Harbor on the Washington coast.

About 70 percent of the crude-oil rail cars that BNSF Railway currently moves through Washington state are already the newer design, railway spokesman Gus Melonas said.

For two decades, the Cherry Point refinery received crude oil only by pipeline, Kidd said. It later added shipments by sea.

But Alaskan crude oil has turned into the last type the refinery is interested in because of the higher price. Crude oil from mid-continent shale formations has become a cheaper option for the refinery, Kidd said.

“It’s completely turned the industry on its head,” Kidd said. “Without access to crude by rail, this refinery cannot compete.”

Refinery Manager Bob Allendorfer said the facility is always going to be progressive when it comes to safety. “Safety is always first, and you have to get it right,” Allendorfer said.

BP Cherry Point, CPC-1232, Crude By Rail, DOT-111, Tank car design

Washington refinery switching to newer rail cars for crude

Repost from The Bellingham Herald

BP Cherry Point will allow only newer-model train cars at its crude oil terminal

By Samantha Wohlfeil, The Bellingham Herald, October 11, 2014


BP Cherry Point has announced its rail terminal will no longer accept or unload any Bakken region crude oil from pre-2011 standard tank cars.By the first week in October, the facility had stopped using older DOT-111 cars for crude, BP spokesman Bill Kidd said.

After several high-profile derailments in the last year, groups concerned about the safety of oil trains have rallied around a call to have companies trade in all old DOT-111 rail cars, which are used to carry a variety of hazardous and flammable liquids, for higher standard cars, like the CPC-1232.

For decades the DOT-111 cars have been found more likely to puncture or burst. The National Transportation Safety Board, which recommended upgraded regulations for crude oil and ethanol cars in 2011, is working on updating rail safety standards.

The newer cars have thicker shells, head shields on either end of the car and improved valve protection.

BP Cherry Point, which received its first crude shipment from the Bakken region Dec. 26, 2013, was already using CPC-1232 tank cars to receive about 60 percent of its crude oil from that area and had planned to get about 400 more by the end of 2014, Kidd said.

“But we expedited that in order to respond to community concerns,” Kidd said. “We pulled a lot of leverage to get to this point.”

The refinery now uses a fleet of about 700 CPC-1232s.

The NTSB could require companies to phase out the DOT-111 cars for crude oil shipping over the next couple of years.

About 70 percent of the crude oil rail cars that BNSF Railway currently moves through Washington state are already the newer design, said Gus Melonas, BNSF spokesman for the Pacific Northwest.

Transition to crude by rail

For two decades the refinery received crude oil only by pipeline, later adding waterborne tanker service, Kidd said. But Alaskan crude oil has turned into the last type the refinery is interested in, due to price.

Though many people did not see it coming, mid-continent shale formation crude oil has become a cheaper option and an advantage for the refinery, Kidd said.

“It’s completely turned the industry on its head,” Kidd said. “Without access to crude by rail, this refinery cannot compete. … If there was a pipeline there wouldn’t be the big discount. Right now there is no other way to move it.”

The Cherry Point rail terminal is made up of two complete loops that allow the refinery to hold up to two trains of about 120 cars – one full and one empty.

It takes crews from BP contractor Savage Services about 18 to 20 hours to offload a train loaded with crude oil using gravity to drain one quarter of the train at a time, said BP Operations’ Ryan Kennedy, who oversees the rail terminal work. Once crews unload a train, it sits empty while BNSF sends a crew back to the facility to pick it up.

The loop is about as flat as it gets, both for working purposes and safety, Kennedy said. A 0.25 percent grade keeps couplers between the cars tight when the trains are parked, and there is a slight grade at the entrance to/exit from the loop so in the event a train did get loose for whatever reason, it would not leave the refinery.

A variety of safety precautions, like plastic liners built in under the rail loop and bins placed under each hose when the cars are hooked up for draining, are designed to prevent bad situations, Kennedy said.

“There’s a lot of fat built in naturally, a lot of redundancy,” Kennedy said. “We secure the train above and beyond the minimum requirement. We’ve determined the standard for the longest train we could hold and we put on that many brakes for all trains, regardless of length.”

BP’s terminal is permitted to receive an average of one unit train per day. It currently gets about 25 per month, Kennedy said.

Refinery Manager Bob Allendorfer said the facility is always going to be progressive when it comes to safety.

“Safety is always first, and you have to get it right,” Allendorfer said.