Tag Archives: Derailment

Bakken Crude, Bridge safety, Crude By Rail, Derailment, Explosion, Federal Regulation (U.S.), Rail infrastructure, Rail inspection

Major oil train risk: bridge infrastructure – who will be the next Quebec?

Repost from FOX6Now, Milwaukee WI

“This needs to be fixed:” FOX6 finds a new “risk on the rails,” could Milwaukee be the next Quebec?

By Brad Hicks, May 12, 2015, 10:00pm


MILWAUKEE (WITI) — Last year, the FOX6 Investigators were the first to expose a new risk on the rails — a steady stream of long oil trains trekking across the state from North Dakota. The crude oil they carry from what’s called “The Bakken” is highly explosive. Since then, there has been growing public concern about these so-called “bomb trains” in Wisconsin. Now, there’s a new concern, in a neighborhood in Milwaukee.

When the mile-long oil trains lumber by Milwaukee’s Fifth Ward lofts, the cars come roller-coaster close to a renovated building. A sliver of light between brick and steel.

Fifth Ward railroad

From his fifth floor window, Brian Chiu has a front row seat.

“It’s so loud,” Chiu said.

But it’s not the noise that concerns him. The fear is five floors down.

Fracking technology has opened an oil spigot in North Dakota.

“It’s increased the amount of traffic on the railroads exponentially,” Wisconsin Railroad Commissioner Jeff Plale said.

The railroad traffic has increased by several thousand percent.

Bakken crude oil has a very high vapor pressure, meaning it can easily explode. And the tank cars carrying it?

“(They) were not designed to haul crude. A lot of them were designed to haul corn syrup,” Plale said.

When these trains have derailed, the cracker-thin tank cars have ruptured, with disastrous results. By far the worst incident occurred in Lac Megantic, Quebec. Forty-seven people were killed in the fireball.

Quebec train derailment

Three times this year, trains carrying crude have derailed in the United States. Last week in North Dakota, the sky turned gray with smoke.

In March, a train derailed across the border in Galena, Illinois. The wreckage burned for four days.

A week before that, a train derailed in West Virginia. Hundreds had to evacuate.

The train that derailed in North Dakota was headed toward Wisconsin. Two trains before that had just been here.

“We’re kind of at the epicenter of where this stuff is coming,” Plale said.

That brings us back to Brian Chiu and his Fifth Ward home — and those oil trains just feet from the Fifth Ward lofts, going over the S. 1st Street bridge.

FOX6 first photographed the concern in February — but it wasn’t until the snow and ice melted that we saw the full extent. “I beams” that support the bridge have rusted away at the base to wafer-thin strips of steel. In some spots, entire sections are just gone.

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Chris Raebel, an engineer at Milwaukee School of Engineering (MSOE) agreed to take a look at what the FOX6 Investigators found.

“My focus is on steel design — just like the bridge,” Raebel said.

Unlike most railroad bridges, which have elevated foundations, the piers on this century-old span reach right to the road — where every winter, salt eats away at the steel.

“That’s hit the base of the bridge and that`s corroding the metal,” Raebel said.

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In the past, some of the rusted piers supporting the bridge have been reinforced, but several columns have been corroded right through.

“At some point this needs to be fixed. This is not acceptable,” Raebel said.

FOX6 News received similar comments from other structural and civil engineers who saw the photos, but they didn’t want to be identified because they may do business with the railroads. They said things like:

“The level of rust and deterioration is a serious structural problem. They should be contacted immediately.”

And: “I would definitely report these conditions to the owner of this bridge without further delay.”

Canadian Pacific Railroad should already be aware. Canadian Pacific owns the bridge and is required to inspect it each year. In a written reply to a FOX6 request for those records, the company said it “meets or exceeds all federal requirements,” and that the bridge was last inspected in the winter. Canadian Pacific wouldn’t tell us exactly when that was — and whether there was snow on the ground. Canadian Pacific refused to show FOX6 News any of the inspection reports.

FOX6 asked them again earlier this months at a Common Council meeting in Milwaukee.

“We`ve given you a statement on that and we won`t have anything to add,” a Canadian Pacific representative said.

Canadian Pacific had been invited to Milwaukee to answer questions about the oil trains. Canadian Pacific’s brash brush off didn’t sit well with some Common Council members.

“You don`t give that image to the community that your facilities are safe. You don`t give us that confidence,” Milwaukee Alderman Terry Witkowski said.

Ken Wood knows what these inspections entail.

“I’m a structural engineer. My main focus is bridges. I`ve been working with bridges for 20 years — bridge design, bridge inspection, bridge rehabilitation,” Wood said. “You`re going to be looking for fatigue cracks, and the other thing you`d look for is corrosion, certainly, on a bridge — because corrosion is basically taking away the cross section.”

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If you look at the base of the “I beams” on the bridge in the Fifth Ward, you’ll see layers and layers of flaking — in some places, more than an inch thick. That doesn’t happen quickly.

“It`s been some time, that`s for sure,” Wood said. “What happens during corrosion is the steel expands, sometimes seven to eight times what it is, so you can see that actually happening in the base here,” Wood said.

FOX6’s Brad Hicks: “How do you even inspect this with that much flaking on there without removing the flaking?”

“They would have to remove flaking to see what`s underneath and take some measurements with calipers to find out how much area they perceive is left,” Raebel said.

So that’s what the FOX6 Investigators did.

The beam is nine-tenths of an inch thick, but at the base, only four-tenths of an inch is left. The column is just over an inch thick. Corrosion has eaten it down to less than half that.

FOX6’s Brad Hicks: “The kind of thinning we`re seeing here, does that impact the load capacity of a bridge like this?”

“Yes,” Raebel said. “They have a certain amount of steel they need to resist the load from above.”

And that load is greater than ever.

Engines alone weigh three times what they did when the bridge was built in 1914. And a one-mile train weighs more than 25 million pounds.

“Now a two-mile long train is relatively common,” Plale said.

And with trains like that moving over the bridge daily — metal fatigue adds up.

“Is the bridge really built, with all that rust and all that corrosion, to support that kind of weight?” Chiu wonders.

Officials in the state of Wisconsin had the same question. In 2006, a study was commissioned on the impact heavier trains have on state-owned railroad bridges. That study concluded “many within the railroad industry are concerned that the aging bridge infrastructure will no longer be able to withstand the increased loadings.”

One bridge engineer who examined FOX6’s pictures said the problem may not be that bad, because in theory, you could cut a vertical pier in two horizontally, and it would still hold up the bridge. But that’s assuming you still have inch-thick “I beams” — not corroded columns.

The concern here isn’t that the bridge will completely collapse — but that if a column gives way and the load shifts and the train tips — with the Fifth Ward lofts just feet away, could Milwaukee become another Quebec?

“I would encourage the owner of the bridge to seriously look at this and consider repairs. And it seems like it should be done soon,” Raebel said.

To their credit, the railroads, including Canadian Pacific, have been at the forefront — pushing the federal government for stricter tank car standards. The railroads don’t actually own the tank cars — the oil companies and third-party leasers do.

Eleven days ago, the federal government announced new cars need to be thicker, and the old ones need to be retrofitted within five years.

The federal government is the only entity that can demand the railroad turn over its inspection reports on the bridge. For two months, FOX6 News repeatedly asked the Federal Railroad Administration if it has any of Canadian Pacific’s inspection audits for the S. 1st Street bridge. The agency hasn’t responded.

Local municipalities like Milwaukee are pretty powerless when it comes to regulating the railroads.

On Tuesday, May 12th, the Milwaukee Common Council approved a resolution urging federal regulators to immediately inspect all tracks, bridges and crossings on which Bakken crude oil is carried — but at the end of the day, that’s simply a request.

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Bakken Crude, CPC-1232, Crude By Rail, Derailment, DOT-111, Explosion, Fire, Oil conditioning, Oil stabilization, Reid vapor pressure levels, Volatile gases

Latest ‘bomb train’ incident predictable

Repost from The Hawkeye, Burlington, Iowa

Latest ‘bomb train’ incident predictable

By Kathleen Sloan, May 11, 2015

BNSF Railway carried the Hess Corp.-owned rail car, which carried highly volatile Bakken crude oil from North Dakota and appears to have followed the law.

President Barack Obama weighed and rejected using executive authority to curb the transport of this explosive crude oil, rich in butane and propane, because he decided North Dakota state law should be the controlling authority. But the law North Dakota passed in December and went into effect just last month, only requires less than 13.7 pounds-per-square-inch vapor pressure inside the tanker, despite explosions at lower pressures.

That’s almost 40 percent more than the average vapor pressure among the 63 tanker cars that exploded July 6, 2013, at Lac-Megantic, Quebec. That disaster killed 47 people, some of whom could not be found because they were vaporized, and is driving recent federal and state rail car regulations.

According to an Albany, N.Y., Times Union investigation, the average vapor pressure among 72 tanker cars in the Lac-Megantic train was 10 psi.

Hess Corp. tested the crude just before loading at 10.8 psi, according to Associated Press reporters Matthew Brown and Blake Nicholson, in their follow-up story about the derailment at Heimdal, N.D.

While federal regulations only require flash point and boiling point to be measured, North Dakota now requires vapor pressure be measured. But measuring and labeling the danger does not make transporting it safe.

The U.S. Department of Transportation’s two divisions, the Federal Railroad Administration and the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, are the regulating authorities overseeing railway transport of crude oil. Generally, the FRA is responsible for train car and rail safety, while the PHMSA inspects the proper testing of the oil. That determines the oil’s proper classification and its proper “packaging” in pressurized cars and their labeling.

Other PHMSA duties include checking shipping documents to see if the shipper has self-certified the procedures properly as well as employee safety and handling training.

The U.S. DOT initiated “Operation Safe Delivery” in August 2013, in reaction to the Lac-Megantic incident, although the Bakken oil boom dates to 2008.

A federal rule-making process also began in August 2013. Those rules went into effect last week.

PHMSA, as part of Operation Safe Delivery, took several samples of Bakken crude oil from rail-loading facilities, storage tanks and pipelines used to load rail cars. Several also were collected from cargo tanks.

The first set of samples were taken August through November 2013 and the second set February through May 2014.

The first set showed psi vapor pressure among a dozen samples ranging from 7.7 psi to 11.75 psi.

A second set of 88 samples showed vapor pressure ranging from 10.1 psi to 15.1, with the average at about 12 psi.

Only six of the 88 samples were at or exceeded North Dakota’s 13.7 psi. This means shippers are not required to treat most of the crude generated from the Bakken oil formation before loading it onto cars.

The “Operation Safe Delivery Update,” available on the PHMSA website, also gives test results for propane, sulphur, hydrogen sulfide, methane and butane content.

The conclusions in the Operations Safe Delivery Update, which was not dated, are:

“Bakken crude’s high volatility level — a relative measure of a specific material’s tendency to vaporize — is indicated by tests concluding that it is a ‘light’ crude oil with a high gas content, a low flash point, a low boiling point and high vapor pressure …

“Given Bakken crude oil’s volatility, there is an increased risk of a significant incident involving this material due to the significant volume that is transported, the routes and the extremely long distances it is moving by rail… These trains often travel over a thousand miles from the Bakken region to refinery locations along the coasts…”

And although the report states, “PHMSA and FRA plan to continue … to work with the regulated community to ensure the safe transportation of crude oil across the nation,” the new rules that went into effect last week did nothing about regulating vapor pressure.

Instead, the rules phase out weaker and older pressurized tanker cars, the DOT-111, by 2020, and phase in CPC-1232 cars.

So far, at least four derailments of CPC-1232 cars carrying Bakken oil have exploded:

    • March 5 in Galena, Ill.;
    • Feb. 1 in Mount Carbon, W.Va.;
    • Feb. 15 near Timmons, Ontario; and
    • Last year in Lynchburg, Va.

Experts in various news articles and public comment submitted during the federal rule-making stated the way to make transport safe is to refine the crude before shipping. That would involve building refineries near the extraction point, which experts pointed out would be expensive.

In a Sept. 26, 2014, story, Railway Age contributing editor David Thomas applauded North Dakota for “using state jurisdiction over natural resources to fill the vacuum created by the federal government’s abdication of its constitutional responsibility for rail safety and hazardous materials.”

But Thomas admitted the state law on crude treatment would reduce the danger only slightly.

“Simply put, North Dakotan crude will have to be lightly pressure-cooked to boil off a fraction of the volatile ‘light ends’ before shipment,” Thomas said. “This conditioning lowers the ignition temperature of crude oil — but not by much. It leaves in solution most of the culprit gases, including butane and propane. Even the industry itself says conditioning would not make Bakken crude meaningfully safer for transportation, though it would make the state’s crude more consistent from one well to another.”

“The only solution for safety is stabilization, which evaporates and re-liquifies nearly all of the petroleum gases for separate delivery to refiners,” Thomas said.

He points out owners and shippers in the Eagle Fork formation in Texas, voluntarily stabilize their crude before shipping. It’s more volatile than Bakken crude.

“So far, stabilized Eagle Fork crude has been transported by tank car as far away as Quebec City, without the fireballs that have plagued the shipment of unstabilized Bakken crude,” Thomas said. “The Texan gases are liquefied and piped underground to the state’s Gulf Coast petrochemical complex for processing and sale.”

Keeping the volatile gases in solution during shipping, while dangerous, is profitable.

Thomas said North Dakota has no nearby petrochemical plants, which “explains the oil industry’s collective decision not to extract the otherwise commercially valuable gases from North Dakota crude oil. Instead, most of the explosive gases remain dissolved in the unstabilized Bakken oil for extraction after delivery to distant refineries.”

The PHMSA, however, requires butane and propane be removed from the crude before it is injected into pipelines, Thomas said.

Comments to the federal rule-making pointed out Bakken oil is made more dangerous still by corrosive chemicals used in the fracking process. The crude is further treated with chemicals to make the molasses-like consistency easier to pump.

Severe corrosion to the inner surface of the tanker cars, manway covers, valves and fittings have been recorded in various incidents, commentators said.

The lack of federal regulations is not the only problem. Enforcement is minimal because there are only 56 inspectors, according to PHMSA spokesman Gordon Delcambre.

Ten of those have been assigned to the North Dakota Bakken oil formation region, he said.

In the PHMSA 2013 annual enforcement report, 151 cases were prosecuted and 312 civil penalty tickets were issued, resulting in $1.87 million in fines. The largest fine was $120,200.

The report did not mention what the hazardous material was in 173 of the 463 enforcement actions.

Only one enforcement action appeared to result from an inspection of “fuel oil” transport, which resulted in a $975 fine for incorrect “packaging” and failure to prove, through documents, employees had been given the required safety and hazardous material handling training.

According to BNSF Railway’s report to the state Homeland Security and Emergency Management, required by a U.S. DOT emergency order since May 2014, a range of zero-to-six trains carrying at least 1 million gallons (30,000 gallons per car or about 35 cars or more) pass through Burlington each week.

Bakken Crude, Crude By Rail, Derailment, Explosion, Insurance and liability, Lac-Mégantic

Lac-Mégantic disaster class-action suit gets green light

Repost from CBC News Montreal

Lac-Mégantic disaster class-action suit gets green light

Plaintiffs told they cannot sue Irving Oil or now-bankrupt Montreal Maine and Atlantic Railway
The Canadian Press, May 09, 2015 11:36 AM ET

A class-action lawsuit has been approved almost two years after a train derailment and explosion killed 47 people in Lac-Mégantic, Que.

But the Quebec Superior Court justice’s ruling means it is far more limited in scope.

Justice Martin Bureau has given the plaintiffs permission to go after only two companies — World Fuel Services and Canadian Pacific Railway.

Initially, the legal action targeted 37 different parties, including Irving Oil, the now-bankrupt Montreal Maine and Atlantic Railway and its former president, Edward Burkhardt.

In January, victims of the rail disaster reached a major financial settlement with Montreal, Maine and Atlantic Canada.

The lawsuit alleges CPR was negligent and there was a lack of prudence in all circumstances leading up to the tragedy.

The lawsuit was filed by three Lac Mégantic residents — Guy Ouellet, Serge Jacques and Louis-Serge Parent — on behalf of all the victims.

The exact amount being sought will be determined at a later date.

Bakken Crude, Crude By Rail, Derailment, Explosion, Fire, North Dakota Industrial Commission, Oil conditioning, State regulation, Train speed, Volatility

Oil in North Dakota derailment was “Conditioned” but not “Stabilized”

Repost rom ABC News
[Editor:  Note that the oil was CONDITIONED according to North Dakota regulations, but it was not STABILIZED which is a stricter standard currently used elsewhere.  (See The difference between oil “conditioning” and oil “stabilization”.)  The vapor pressure of oil on this train was measured at 10.8 psi. Compare this with DeSmogBlog: “…regular crude oil has a Reid Vapor Pressure (RVP) of 5-7 psi and Bakken crude has an RVP between 8-16 psi. To put that in perspective, gasoline typically has a RVP of 9 psi.”  Note also: “The North Dakota train was traveling 24 miles an hour…much slower than the 50 mph limit imposed by federal regulators.”  – RS]

Oil in North Dakota Derailment Was Treated to Cut Volatility

By Matthew Brown and Blake Nicholson, Associated Press, May 7, 2015, 7:09 PM ET

BISMARCK, N.D. — A shipment of oil involved in an explosive train derailment in North Dakota had been treated to reduce its volatility — a move that state officials suggested could have reduced the severity of the accident but won’t prevent others from occurring.

Hess Corporation spokesman John Roper said the oil complied with a state order requiring propane, butane and other volatile gases to be stripped out of crude before it’s transported. That conditioning process lowers the vapor pressure of the oil, reducing the chances of an explosive ignition during a crash.

Despite the treatment of the crude in Wednesday’s accident, six cars carrying a combined 180,000 gallons of oil caught fire in the derailment 2 miles from the town of small Heimdal in central North Dakota. The town was evacuated but no one was hurt.

Investigators on Thursday recovered wheel fragments from the scene. Those will be sent to a government laboratory for analysis, said National Transportation Safety Board spokesman Keith Holloway. A defective tank car wheel is suspected to have played a role in another oil train accident, in Galena, Illinois, on March 10.

The North Dakota train was traveling 24 miles an hour, Holloway said, much slower than the 50 mph limit imposed by federal regulators.

The state volatility standard went into effect last month. It came in response to a string of fiery oil train accidents, including a 2013 derailment in Lac-Megantic, Quebec that killed 47 people and a derailment and fire near Casselton, North Dakota last year.

Members of Congress have called for a stricter, national volatility standard for crude moved by rail.

Roper said the Hess shipment was “fully in compliant with North Dakota’s crude conditioning order.” It was tested immediately prior to loading onto a BNSF Railway train in Tioga and had a vapor pressure of 10.8 pounds per square inch — compared to the 13.7 pounds per square inch maximum under the state standard.

Reducing the explosiveness of crude moved by rail was not supposed to be a cure-all. Federal regulators last week announced a new rule that calls for stronger tank cars better able to withstand a derailment and more advanced braking systems to help keep fuel-carrying cars on the tracks.

“Our oil conditioning order in no way will prevent an accident,” said Alison Ritter with the North Dakota Industrial Commission, which set the vapor pressure standard. “Oil is still going to burn. That’s why the oil was produced. But it’s not as explosive.”

The first witness on the scene Wednesday, 68-year-old Heimdal resident Curt Benson, said he heard and felt an explosion in his house and then witnessed three or four more explosions when he got to the scene. He said it was nowhere near the magnitude of the Casselton explosions, which he saw on television footage.

“I would say that ours was somewhat minor compared to theirs,” Benson said.

Casselton Fire Chief Tim McLean said the disaster outside of that city appeared much worse than the Heimdal incident, but there were other factors to consider than just the volatility of the oil. The Casselton derailment involved more than twice the amount of crude and different kinds of tanker cars, he said. Another freight train, carrying soybeans, also was involved in Casselton and provided more fuel for the fire.

Democrats in Congress contend more needs to be done to reduce the danger of oil shipments by rail that pass through more than 400 counties including major metropolitan areas such as Seattle, Chicago and Philadelphia. Most of that oil comes from the Bakken region of North Dakota, Montana and Canada.

“Why do we let trains with this volatility pass through every day? Why are we letting these guys get away with that?” U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell, a Washington state Democrat, said in an interview last week after federal regulators unveiled the braking and tank car rule.

BNSF vice president Mike Trevino did not immediately know how much of the oil in Heimdal burned, how much spilled and how much was left in the cars after the fire was extinguished.

The railway was working to remove the derailed cars and repair the track Thursday. It planned to re-open the line Friday afternoon, Trevino said.

The line runs next to an intermittent waterway known as the Big Slough, which drains into the James River about 15 miles downstream. Oil got into the slough, but it was contained and was being recovered, state Emergency Services spokeswoman Cecily Fong said early Thursday.

The tank cars that burst into flames were a model slated to be phased out or retrofitted by 2020 under a federal rule announced last week. It’s the fifth fiery accident since February involving that type of tank car, and industry critics called for them to be taken off the tracks immediately to prevent further fires.

For residents of Heimdal and surrounding Wells County, which oil trains cross daily, the disaster was the realization of something they always feared might happen, County Commission Chairman Mark Schmitz said.

“It’s definitely been in the back of everybody’s minds,” he said.

———

Brown reported from Billings, Montana.