Tag Archives: DOT-111

Federal Regulation (U.S.), Rail Safety, Rail tanker cars

Unsafe rail cars remain in service, Senators angry

Repost from The Star Tribune, Minneapolis, MN

Slow pace of oil train fixes draws Senate ire

Article by: JIM SPENCER, Star Tribune
Updated: March 7, 2014

On Capitol Hill, senators were told that none of the thousands of inadequately protected rail cars has been removed from service.

OilTrainAn oil train headed for Minnesota rolled through Casselton, N.D., scene of an explosive rail accident in December. Photo: New York Times file.

WASHINGTON – Virtually all of the potentially unsafe rail cars carrying crude oil across the country remain in service, hauling highly flammable liquid, an official from the American Petroleum Institute (API) testified at a Senate hearing on rail safety Thursday.

API official Prentiss Searles told Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, D-N.D., that to his knowledge the oil and gas industry had retired none of the puncture-prone tankers from their fleets.

The issue arose after Searles testified that 40 percent of the rail cars now hauling crude have updated superstructures designed to keep them intact if they derail.

Heitkamp pressed Searles to clarify his point. The senator explained that crude oil shipments from her state’s Bakken formation are growing so fast that all the newer, safer tanker cars being produced are needed for increased capacity, not replacement.

The tanker fleet “has grown,” Heitkamp said to Searles. “You haven’t taken any [of the more vulnerable cars] off the rails.”

“Not to my knowledge,” Searles replied.

Those cars continue to carry crude oil despite a National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) determination that “multiple recent serious and fatal accidents reflect substantial shortcomings in tank car design that create an unacceptable public risk.”

There were 27,130 substandard cars carrying crude oil as of the third quarter of 2013, according to the Railway Supply Institute. Another 29,071 carried ethanol, which also is flammable.

Frustration with the speed at which safety reforms are being implemented dominated Thursday’s hearing, which came in the wake of fiery oil train derailments in North Dakota and Canada.

Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, a Democrat, pointed out to a panel of government regulators and private industry representatives that federal rules for safer tank cars have been 2½ years in the making with no resolution.

“We’re moving as fast as we can,” answered Cynthia Quarterman, head of the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration.

Her response and those of leaders of the Federal Railroad Administration and Federal Communications Commission, drew an exasperated rebuke from Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., who chaired the hearing.

“We need to get it right, but we need to get it done,” Blumenthal said.

The volume of crude oil moved by train from production points in the United States to refineries grew from about 9,500 carloads in 2008 to 400,000 carloads in 2013. Each tank car holds 25,000 to 30,000 gallons of crude oil.

Virtually all of that oil gets where it is going without incident. But in the very rare exceptions, consequences have been destructive and sometimes deadly. The danger raises the stakes for people living near rail lines in states like Minnesota, where eight oil trains pass on a daily basis, six through the Twin Cities.

The oil and gas industry, which owns or leases most of the rail cars used to ship crude oil, developed a set of voluntary standards for more puncture-proof and leakproof tanker cars. But the NTSB considers the new design inadequate, something the petroleum institute disputes.

“This is shaping up as a regulatory fight,” Heitkamp observed. “This is very problematic from a public ­perspective.”

Besides the structure of rail cars, lack of computerized control of trains — called positive train control — and the unique volatility of oil drawn from the Bakken Formation were sore points at the hearing.

Positive train control will require installation of roughly 22,000 antennae near tracks across the country. The Federal Communications Commission has delayed antenna  deployment while it checks to see if any of the sites violate environmental and historic preservation laws. Several senators blasted the FCC for bureaucratic foot-dragging.

The unique volatility of Bakken oil also remains in dispute. The oil and gas industry denies it, but the Department of Transportation has said the oil drawn from North Dakota “may be more flammable than traditional heavy crude oil.”

Quarterman of the Hazardous Materials Safety Administration said the government has moved from testing its flash point and boiling point to looking at its vapor pressure and sulfur and flammable gas content. Still, regulators and industry have not settled on a new testing or classification regimen.

“It’s a learning process,” Quarterman said

Federal Regulation (U.S.), Rail tanker cars

Senator Schumer proposes speedier phase-out of DOT-111 tanker cars

Repost from The Buffalo News

Rail cars through Buffalo post risk that Schumer seeks to end

Schumer proposes speedier phase-out

Crews work on some overturned crude oil cars in the CSX yard in Cheektowaga on Dec. 10. The accident did not cause a spill.

Crews work on some overturned crude oil cars in the CSX yard in Cheektowaga on Dec. 10. The accident did not cause a spill. Mark Mulville/Buffalo News

By Jerry Zremski | News Washington Bureau Chief
February 26, 2014 – 8:14 PM, updated February 27, 2014

WASHINGTON – A hundred tanker cars long, one or two crude oil trains from out west roll through Buffalo every day, along with a train carrying 81 tanker cars of ethanol.

And it all sounds pretty risky to Sen. Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., who proposed Wednesday that in densely populated New York, the rail industry speed up the phase-out of the most dangerous kind of crude oil rail tanker cars: the type involved in a deadly derailment in Quebec last year and a much less disastrous one in Cheektowaga last December.

Schumer’s suggestion won the support of Cheektowaga Town Supervisor Mary Holtz, who said people in the town were shaken up by the Dec. 10 derailment even though it caused no spills or injuries.

“We have a lot of houses that are very close to the railroad tracks, so if anything happens here, we’re going to blow up,” Holtz said.

That’s exactly what happened in the town of Lac-Megantic, Quebec, last July 6, when a train carrying crude oil derailed. Several tanker cars exploded, 47 people died, and half of the town’s downtown area was destroyed.

There are parallels between the tanker cars that blew up in Quebec and those that roll through Buffalo on a daily basis. They all carry oil from North Dakota’s Bakken Shale – the biggest American oil play in decades – to points east. And rail industry sources said most of the oil tanker cars that roll through Buffalo are the DOT-111 model, which is the very same model used on the train that derailed in Quebec.

DOT-111 tanker cars aren’t armored or pressurized, making them much more likely to puncture or explode than newer, more sophisticated models.

And while the Federal Railroad Administration and the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration are drawing up new rules that will either eliminate the use of DOT-111s or require that they be retrofitted to meet new safety standards, Schumer said that private oil car leasing companies should draw up a plan by July 1 to phase out their use in New York.

“Transporting crude oil by rail in outdated tank cars – which have been proven to fail frequently upon derailment – is a ticking time bomb,” Schumer said.

Schumer’s statement follows a voluntary agreement struck last week by the U.S. Department of Transportation and the Association of American Railroads that aims to make the rail transport of crude oil safer.

Part of that voluntary agreement calls for lowering the speed limit for oil trains passing through Buffalo and New York City from 50 mph to 40 mph. But Schumer said that speed limit should be enacted for trains passing through all heavily populated upstate areas.

In statements, CSX Corp. – which operates the trains that pass through Buffalo – and the Association of American Railroads stressed that they are taking steps to ensure that oil is being transported safely.

“The DOT-111 tank cars operating today are designed to meet current federal and regulatory requirements as well as industry standards,” CSX said. “The federal government establishes the minimum construction standards for the type of tank cars in which hazardous materials can be transported.”

Meanwhile, the Association of American Railroads said the industry was trying to assess how lower speed limits would affect railroad delivery times.

“In recognition of the significant growth in crude oil moving by rail, and community concerns such as those raised by Sen. Schumer, freight railroads were willing to quickly come together and identify the voluntary steps announced last week,” the rail industry group said.

“In fact, the agreement with DOT does contain a commitment to work with communities to find ways to address their individual concerns.”

The voluntary safety measures also include increased track inspections, better braking technology and safer routing for crude oil trains.

Those measures follow an astounding increase in the amount of crude oil shipped via rail since the beginning of the North Dakota oil boom.

Schumer noted that trains carried nearly 1,400 carloads of oil daily last year, compared with only 31 in 2009. And while CSX would not confirm the number of oil cars rolling through Buffalo, a source with the Brotherhood of Locomotive and Engineers Trainmen said one or two 100-car crude oil trains pass through the city daily, along with that train carrying ethanol.

The trains pass over the Fort-Erie/Buffalo rail bridge and then proceed eastward over tracks that parallel Broadway into Cheektowaga before moving on through Rochester, Syracuse, Utica and Albany. There, they turn southward through New Jersey.

In addition to the spill-free Cheektowaga derailment last December, federal statistics show three small spills of about a gallon each from trains passing through Buffalo last year.

In addition, a minor ethanol leak occurred from a train passing through the area last July, said Kate Hudson, watershed program director at Riverkeeper Inc., a New York environmental group that has called for an immediate moratorium on rail shipments of crude oil in the state.

Those DOT-111 rail cars just aren’t safe, Hudson said, likening them to “a Pepsi can on wheels.”