Calls to Ban Bomb Trains Ramp Up While Communities Await New Regulations
By Justin Mikulka, 2014-12-15
Earthjustice has challenged the Department of Transportation’s denial of a petition by Sierra Club and Forest Ethics to ban the transportation of Bakken crude oil in DOT-111 tank cars.
“Most of the explosive crude oil on U.S. rails is moving in tanker cars that are almost guaranteed to fail in an accident,” explained Patti Goldman of Earthjustice.
“The risks are too great to keep shipping explosive Bakken crude in defective DOT-111s. The National Transportation Safety Board called them unsafe two decades ago, and by the Department of Transportation’s own estimates, the U.S. could see 15 rail accidents every year involving these cars until we get them off the tracks.”
At the same time Earthjustice was bringing this challenge, the Canadian government was announcing that it will ban 3,000 of the riskiest DOT-111s from carrying materials like Bakken crude.
And in California, where last week a train carrying grain derailed into the Feather River, democratic state senator Jerry Hill called on Governor Jerry Brown to impose a moratorium on oil trains in the state. The Feather River rail line is also used for Bakken crude oil trains.
In Toronto, the new mayor called for an end to these dangerous trains passing through the city.
“I said during the campaign and I’ll repeat it now, that I think we should be moving in the direction, in negotiation with the railways and the federal government, to stop movement of toxic and dangerous substances through the city at all,” reported The Star.
Perhaps the fact that the new mayor isn’t smoking crack like his predecessor has something to do with this rather clear-headed assessment. You would, after all, have to be on crack to think running DOT-111s filled with Bakken crude through highly populated areas was an acceptable practice.
Meanwhile in Baltimore, residents are fighting a new proposal for an oil-by-rail facility that would bring these trains right through their neighborhoods.
In addition to calls for outright bans of the DOT-111s, two states recently released new studies about the oil train issue.
In New York, Governor Andrew Cuomo is looking for ways to fund the oil spill clean up fund for the state. The fund is projected to be in the red financially by 2016 and currently collects no fees from the oil companies transporting the Bakken and tar sands oil through the state. As many as 44 oil trains carrying at least 1,000,000 gallons of oil, and often more than 3,000,000 gallons, cross New York each week.
Cuomo criticized the federal government’s lack of movement on new oil-by-rail regulations referring to their progress as “unacceptably slow” according to The Record Online.
“Over the past six months, our administration has taken swift and decisive action to increase the state’s preparedness and better protect New Yorkers from the possibility of a crude oil disaster,” Cuomo said. “Now it is time for our federal partners to do the same.”
Cuomo’s self-assessment of New York’s actions didn’t impress oil train activists. Sandy Steubing of Albany, NY, based group PAUSE isn’t pleased with the state’s progress.
“The Governor’s response is lame; he’s either urging other entities like the railroad and the Federal government to protect New Yorkers or he’s trying to appear like the measures he’s taking will protect us,” Steubing said. “There’s not enough foam in the entire state to protect us from an explosive derailment the likes of which we’ve seen five times since July of 2013.”
The Department of Ecology’s report estimates that 12.7 billion gallons of oil were moved through the state by rail in 2013 alone and says 19 trains of roughly 100 tank cars each are passing through the state each week today. It predicts that traffic could mushroom to 137 weekly trains by 2020 if all proposed oil terminals and refinery expansion projects are permitted and utilized.
In response, the town council made it illegal for trains to stop for more than 10 minutes in town. Now the town is being sued by Canadian Pacific. Unfortunately for the residents of Enderlin, Canadian Pacific has a strong argument that many municipalities are learning about now that they have become the home to oil train operations.
Kansas interstate commerce attorney Bob Pottroff explained the reality to Reuters, “Right now cities don’t have the right to tell a railroad it can’t park in the middle of their town.” If Enderlin were to win, Pottroff predicted the result could have far reaching effects as other municipalities opted to take some level of control over rail traffic within their borders.
In the face of this widespread opposition to the dangers posed by the oil-by-rail industry, there just happens to be a new industry-funded study showing that no new regulations are warranted.
The Railway Supply Institute funded a report prepared by The Brattle Group that concludes that all of the proposed regulations may have benefits but in every case they have found that the costs outweigh these benefits. In addition to this conclusion, Natural Gas Intelligence reports that The Brattle Group proposes one of the other favorite industry tactics for delaying new regulations. More research.
As communities across the country await new oil-by-rail regulations and continue to hear about close calls regarding oil train accidents the level of opposition to the dangers of transporting explosive oil in DOT-111s continues to grow. Unfortunately for them, the lobbyists for Big Oil and Big Rail are still hard at work protecting their profits above all else.
Repost from Faces of Fracking [Editor – This is much more than a story about our friend Ed Ruszel. Author Tara Lohan packs background and detail into this piece like a great storyteller. Another MUST READ, including almost everything you need to know about crude by rail in Benicia…. (This story also appears on Grist and DeSmogBlog.) – RS]
Faces of Fracking
Stories from the front lines of fracking in California
Ed Ruszel’s family business is in an industrial park in Benicia, CA, where Valero Energy is hoping to build a new rail terminal at its refinery to accept 70,000 barrels of crude oil a day. (Sarah Craig)
Ed Ruszel’s workday is a soundtrack of whirling, banging, screeching — the percussion of wood being cut, sanded, and finished. He’s the facility manager for the family business, Ruszel Woodworks. But one sound each day roars above the cacophony of the woodshop: the blast of the train horn as cars cough down the Union Pacific rail line that runs just a few feet from the front of his shop in an industrial park in Benicia, California.
Most days the train cargo is beer, cars, steel, propane, or petroleum coke. But soon two trains of 50 cars each may pass by every day carrying crude oil to a refinery owned by neighboring Valero Energy. Valero is hoping to build a new rail terminal at the refinery that would bring 70,000 barrels a day by train — or nearly 3 million gallons.
And it’s a sign of the times.
Crude by rail has increased 4,000 percent across the country since 2008 and California is feeling the effects. By 2016 the amount of crude by rail entering the state is expected to increase by a factor of 25. That’s assuming industry gets its way in creating more crude by rail stations at refineries and oil terminals. And that’s no longer looking like a sure thing.
Valero’s proposed project in Benicia is just one of many in the area underway or under consideration. All the projects are now facing public pushback — and not just from individuals in communities, but from a united front spanning hundreds of miles. Benicia sits on the Carquinez Strait, a ribbon of water connecting the San Pablo and Suisun Bays in the northeastern reaches of the San Francisco Bay Area. Here, about 20 miles south of Napa’s wine country and 40 miles north of San Francisco, the oil industry may have found a considerable foe.
The Geography of Oil
The heart of California’s oil industry is the Central Valley — 22,500 square miles that also doubles as the state’s most productive farmland. Oil that’s produced here is delivered to California refineries via pipeline. For decades California and Alaska crude were the main suppliers for the state’s refineries. Crude came by pipeline or by boat. Over the last 20 years imports from places like Saudi Arabia, Ecuador, and Iraq have outpaced domestic production. But a recent boom in “unconventional fuels” has triggered an increase in North American sources in the last few years. This has meant more fracked crude from North Dakota’s Bakken shale and diluted bitumen from Alberta’s tar sands.
A Union Pacific train engine is parked in front of the Valero refinery in Benicia, CA. Union Pacific has the final say over the logistics of trains arriving to the refinery. (Sarah Craig)
Unit trains are becoming a favored way to help move this cargo. These are trains in which the entire cargo — every single car — is one product. And in this case that product happens to be highly flammable.
This is one of the things that has Ed Ruszel concerned. He doesn’t think the tank cars are safe enough to transport crude oil (or ethanol, which is also passing through his neighborhood) in the advent of a serious derailment.
But he’s also concerned not just with the kind of cargo, but the sheer volume of it. If a derailment occurs on a train and every single car (up to 100 cars long) is carrying volatile crude, the dangers increase exponentially. The more trains on the tracks, the more likely something could go wrong. In 2013, more crude was spilled in train derailments than in the prior three decades combined, and there were four fiery explosions in North America in a year’s span.
This risk Marilaine Savard knows well. I met her in February of 2014 when she visited the Bay Area to tell residents about what happened in her town of Lac Megantic, Quebec. The closest word to describe the experience was “apocalypse,” she said, through tears.
Most people by now know of the train derailment that killed 47 people and incinerated half of Lac Megantic’s downtown in the wee hours of the morning on July 7, 2013. The fire was so hot the city burned for 36 hours. Even the lake burned.
Just two days before the disaster in Lac Megantic, Ed joined a community meeting in Benicia about the Valero project. For many residents, it was the first they were learning of it, but Ed had known months before.
In January 2013 a train carrying petroleum coke leaving Valero’s refinery derailed. It was minor — no cargo spilled — but it did rip up a piece of track, and the stalled train blocked the driveway to Ruszel Woodworks for hours. It was one of three minor derailments in the industrial park in the span of 10 months.
Ed came outside to see what the problem was. “The Valero people told me ‘get used to it, because we’re really going to be bringing in a lot of cars soon,’” Ed says. “At that point I really started paying attention and I got really scared.” Ed soon learned about plans for Valero’s new terminal, the 100 train cars that would pass by his business each day, and that it appeared the city was ready to rubber stamp the project — no Environmental Impact Report required.
The fire was so hot the city burned for 36 hours. Even the lake burned.
To explain one of the reasons for his concern, Ed shows me around his property where the lands comes to a V and two rails lines intersect. The main line of Union Pacific’s track passes along the back of Ed’s property, about 75 feet from his building. Here trains can get off the main line and switch to the local line that runs inside the industrial park. The local track passes by the front of Ed’s property, about 20 feet from the building.
The tracks into the industrial park were not designed for a crude by rail facility, Ed says. There are no loops. For Valero to get crude tanks into the refinery, the train must pass by the back of Ed’s property on the main line, pull all the way forward (usually about a mile), and then back up onto the local line, past the front of Ed’s property and into the refinery. The process is reversed when the train leaves. The 100 train cars a day that Valero hopes to bring in will come by his business up to four times per day.
That’s a concern not just because of potential dangers from derailments and diesel fumes from idling trains, but also because the industrial park has a rail traffic problem.
“My big concern here is specifically with the rails — I realize there are other huge environmental issues and global issues with the kinds of fossil fuel production we’re dealing with now and where it’s going,” Ed says.
Already trains servicing the Valero refinery and other industry neighbors can cause traffic nightmares. The trains block driveways to businesses and sometimes major roadways. An off ramp from Interstate 680 empties into the industrial park. Ed has photos of cars trying to exit the highway but are backed up on the interstate because of train traffic.
The reason has to do with the area’s history.
The tracks that come through the industrial park were not built for industry, but for the U.S. Army.
From 1851 to 1964, part of the land now claimed as an industrial park was home to the Benicia Arsenal. Bunker doors in the hillsides and buildings from the 1800s are part of the area’s colorful history. The rail lines moved around troops and armaments from the Civil War through the Korean War, Ed says, but it’s ill-suited to servicing a busy commercial rail terminal.
The Public Comments
Ed’s family moved their woodworking business to the industrial park in 1980. His brother Jack and their father started the company when Jack was still in high school, and it’s grown to over 20 employees. They’ve always played nice with the other businesses, including the refinery, which was built in 1968 and bought by Valero in 2000.
But the Ruszels felt the crude by rail issue demanded they take a stand. While not aligned with any local activist groups, Ed and other members of his family have spoken publicly about their concerns.
“In some ways, getting outspoken we feel like we’re sticking our neck out,” Ed says. “There are four generations of my family here in Benicia — I’ve got my 80 year-old mother, tiny little grandnieces and nephews, and they all have to live with it. But it is important enough.”
Their voices are part of a growing chorus in the area.
On May 31, 2013 the City of Benicia issued a Mitigated Negative Declaration, which means an initial study by the city concluded there were no significant environmental problems with the project that couldn’t be mitigated.
But many residents felt differently and commented on the initial study or voiced concerns at a July 9 city planning department meeting, which occurred just two days after the disaster in Lac Megantic drove home the reality of a catastrophic accident.
By August the city sided with concerned residents and decided that a draft Environmental Impact Report (DEIR) needed to be prepared to further review the project. An outside consultant was hired for the job but paid for by Valero. After much delay, the DEIR was released in June 2014 and promptly slammed by everyone from the state’s Attorney General Kamala Harris to the local group Benicians for a Safe and Healthy Community because it left out crucial information and failed to address the full scope of the project.
Even the Sacramento Area Council of Governments, which represents 22 cities in six counties that are “uprail” from the project, weighed in. It noted the draft EIR doesn’t offer any recommendations for safety measures because it concludes there is no “significant hazard.”
“We believe that conclusion is fundamentally flawed, disregards the recent events demonstrating the very serious risk to life and property that these shipments pose, and contradicts the conclusions of the federal government, which is mobilizing to respond to these risks,” the comment states. It even quotes a U.S. Department of Transportation report from May 2014 that says that Bakken crude by rail shipments pose an “imminent hazard.”
One of the biggest omissions in Valero’s DEIR was Union Pacific not being named as an official partner in the project. With the trains arriving via its rail lines, all logistics will come down to the railroad. Not only that, but the federal power granted to railroad companies preempts local and regional authority.
This preemption is one of the biggest hurdles for communities that don’t want to see crude by rail come through their neighborhoods or want better safeguards. An October 2014 editorial in the San Francisco Chronicle lamented, “What’s really crazy is the federal law that allows preemption of municipal and state law when it comes to critical decisions on rail safety. Affected communities deserve a say over what rolls through their towns.” With preemption, that may be impossible.
The DEIR also doesn’t identify exactly what kind of North American crudes would be arriving and from where, deeming it “confidential business information.” Attorney General Kamala Harris called that omission an “overly broad determination of trade secrets.”
Different kinds of crude have different health and safety risks. A pipeline rupture carrying Canadian diluted bitumen in a tributary of the Kalamazoo River in Michigan in 2010 showed that the thick, corrosive crude is much harder (perhaps impossible) to clean up adequately and is different than conventional crude, which sheens on the surface of water. And Bakken crude has proved more explosive than other crudes because of its chemical composition. It’s likely that some of the crude coming to Valero’s refinery would be from either or both sources.
Consider the numbers: In 2013 the total crude by rail brought into California was nearly 6.3 million barrels, and in the first nine months of 2014, the numbers were 4.3 million barrels. The top two sources have been North Dakota and Canada.
Further, the DEIR only examines the risks of a minor derailment along a 69-miles stretch of track between Benicia and Roseville. It doesn’t address the hazards (which could be catastrophic) of the three potential routes that the Union Pacific trains may take entering California, which involve passing over mountains, through tinderbox-dry forests, and along critical water sources.
Just a week ago a train derailed along one such route in the Feather River Canyon. Eleven cars plunged off the track and down the canyon. Had the cargo been crude instead of corn, its contamination could have made its way down the Feather River to Lake Oroville, a reservoir for millions of Californians.
Public comments on the DEIR closed on September 15, and now it’s a waiting game to see what happens next in Benicia. The planning commission will vote on whether to accept or deny the permit for the project. If the commission denies the permit, Valero can appeal to the city council. Either way, it’s likely to end up in court.
Cumulative Impacts
Ed spends his weekdays on land in Benicia and his weekends on the water, sailing out of nearby Richmond. He has shaggy brown hair, a neatly trimmed salt and pepper goatee, and looks every bit the weathered sailor that he is.
Having worked professionally as a boat captain and even as a solo sailor to Hawaii, Ed is a bit overqualified for the nearly windless fall Sunday we set sail with local activist Marilyn Bardet, a member of Benicians for a Safe and Healthy Community.
Ed Ruszel and Marilyn Bardet, an activist with Benicians for a Safe and Healthy Community, sail outside of the Richmond Harbor to investigate the presence of the oil industry along the Bay Area’s shoreline. (Sarah Craig) “Richmond Sailing” by Faces of Fracking, CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
Marilyn has been a refinery watchdog in Benicia for years and worries about more than just the transportation of fossil fuels. “For me it’s not only about whether they were going to bring it by rail, but whether they were going to bring it at all,” she says.
Sailing from Richmond, we get a good perspective of how pervasive the oil industry is in this area. We pass a couple of blue and white docked ships with their decals reading “Marine Spill Response.” Ever since the Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska, Ed explains, the industry pays into a fund that keeps ships at the ready in case of an accident.
No such thing exists for the crude by rail industry. In fact, the National Transportation Safety Board reported in January 2014, “Current regulations do not require railroads transporting crude oil in multiple tank cars to develop comprehensive spill response plans and have resources on standby for response to worst-case discharges.”
Ed points the bow of the boat toward the Long Wharf in Point Richmond where hulking oil tankers sidle up to be unburdened of their cargo.
We also have a clear view of the large terra cotta-colored storage tanks nesting above neighborhoods in the hillsides of Richmond. These are part of the sprawling refinery operations run by Chevron, but first begun by Standard Oil in 1901.
And it’s not the only refinery around here. In the North Bay, there are five along a 20-mile crescent, with Richmond and Benicia being the bookends. In between, Phillips 66 operates a refinery in Rodeo, and two other refineries (Shell and Tesoro) straddle Martinez.
Residents of these towns have joined in the crude-by-rail fights as well — lending their comments to Environmental Impact Reports, attending community meetings, and joining together for “healing walks” between communities.
Oil storage tanks used by the Chevron refinery in Richmond, CA are seen from the water’s edge. A fire at the refinery in 2012 caused thousands of nearby residents to seek medical treatment. (Sarah Craig) “Chevron Refinery By the Bay” by Faces of Fracking, CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
The network of support has even extended hundreds of miles south. The Phillips 66 refinery has two parts — one in Rodeo and the other 200 miles away, just outside the town of Nipomo in San Luis Obispo County. A pipeline joins the operations. The refinery has expansion plans that are currently being reviewed. One part of those plans involves building a new rail unloading facility in Nipomo that would bring in five unit trains of crude a week, with 50,000 barrels per train.
But the crude-by-rail projects in the area don’t end there. In nearby Pittsburgh, 20 miles east of Benicia, residents pushed back against plans from WestPac Energy. The company had planned to lease land from BNSF Railway and build a new terminal to bring in a 100-car unit train each day of crude. But WestPac’s plan has stalled after Attorney General Kamala Harris commented on a recirculated Draft Environmental Impact Report and said the project had “significant legal problems” and “fails to disclose the sources and analyze the environmental impacts of the new crude.”
Further south in Kern County in the heart of oil country, Plains All American just opened a crude-by-rail terminal that is permitted for a 100-car unit train each day. Another nearby project, Alon USA, received permission from the county for twice as much but is being challenged by lawsuits from environmental groups.
Closer to home, though, unit trains are already arriving. In March, an investigation by local TV station KPIX revealed that Kinder Morgan, a “midstream” company which is in the business of transporting crude (usually by pipeline or rail), received a change of use permit for a rail terminal in Richmond. Kinder Morgan had been transporting ethanol, but the Bay Area Air Quality Management District OK’d Kinder Morgan to offload unit trains of Bakken crude into tanker trucks. KPIX journalists followed the trucks to the Tesoro refinery in Martinez, just across the Carquinez Strait from Benicia.
Aimee Durfee is part of the Martinez Environmental Group. Not only is Martinez flanked by two refineries, but it’s also bisected by Union Pacific rail lines. Now, the residents also know that crude is arriving by truck. “We came to understand that we are collateral damage,” she said. “We get it coming and going.”
Aimee says her group’s biggest fear is the threat of derailment and explosion. The same is true for many Richmond residents near Kinder Morgan’s rail terminal.
“The permit was given illegally by the air district, without concern for the health and safety of the community,” says Andres Soto, an organizer with Communities for a Better Environment. “Should there be a catastrophic explosion — there are residences and two elementary schools across the street from the railyard.” He also says that the blast zone in Richmond contains a total of 27 schools. The blast zone is defined as a half mile away for evacuations if there is a derailment and one mile away if there is an explosion and fire.
Train cars are parked at the Kinder Morgan rail facility in Richmond, CA. The facility is currently permitted to offload Bakken crude from unit trains. (Sarah Craig) “Rail Terminal” by Faces of Fracking, CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
Earthjustice, a nonprofit that litigates on behalf of environmental causes, has led legal efforts trying to block the permit for Kinder Morgan, but in September, Judge James Bush threw out the suit because it was not filed within 180 days of the permit issuance. (The catch-22 of course being that it hadn’t been filed in the proper window of time because no one knew it had even happened, since public notice was not given.)
Earthjustice has appealed Judge Bush’s decision, but residents are continuing to fight the permit in other ways. On October 28, the Richmond City Council unanimously passed a resolution calling on the Bay Area Air Quality Management District to review and “if feasible, revoke the permit and subject the project to a complete CEQA process,” which would be a full environmental review.
The Big Picture
With all this crude by rail activity, some big picture thinking would be helpful. As Attorney General Kamala Harris wrote about the Benicia project, “There’s no consideration of cumulative impacts that could affect public safety and the environment by the proliferation of crude-by-rail projects proposed in California.”
Ed has come to a similar understanding. He is focused on the trains passing by his shop, but the process has opened his eyes to a lot more. He’d heard about the impacts of tar sands and Bakken crude but didn’t have a personal connection to it until unit trains began arriving in California.
“Just focusing on what’s happening in my little neck of the woods has led me to spend more time really looking at the big picture,” he said. “The climate is rapidly changing for one reason or another and probably a good portion of it is what we’re doing with the burning of fossil fuels and so forth, especially this rapid extraction.
“I can’t go to New York and demonstrate or deal with the Keystone XL pipeline, but we can look around here, keep our eyes open, and try to articulate what we’re seeing locally,” says Ed.
U.S. Sued Over Refusal to Ban Older Rail Cars for Crude
By Andrew Zajac, Dec 2, 2014
A train with DOT-111 tanker cars. Chris Jordan-Bloch / Earthjustice
Earthjustice and other environmental groups asked a federal court to force the U.S. Transportation Department to reconsider its rejection of an immediate ban on the use of rail tank cars lacking updated safety features for shipping Bakken crude oil.
The tank cars’ safety was questioned after a July 2013 explosion that killed 47 people when an unattended, runaway train hauling 72 carloads of Bakken crude derailed in Lac-Megantic, Quebec.
The transportation department is managing tank car safety issues through a series of directives, short of a ban, and rules are being drafted to phase out the older rolling stock, the agency said in November, declining the groups’ request for an emergency ban.
That response fails to consider the risks posed by the cars, including “past findings that the surge in crude-by-rail shipments of Bakken crude in dangerous tank cars poses imminent hazards and emergency unsafe conditions,” according to the complaint, filed today in federal appeals court in San Francisco.
The rail vessels in question are older models, collectively referred to as DOT-111 tank cars, that lack safeguards needed to improve crashworthiness, according the environmentalists’ original request for a ban, filed in July.
Oil from the Bakken shale region of North Dakota tends to be more volatile and flammable than other crude, according to a Transportation Department study released in July.
Production of Bakken crude is soaring beyond the capacity of pipelines, leading to an increased use of trains.
The Sierra Club and ForestEthics joined Earthjustice in the lawsuit.
The case is Sierra Club v. U.S. Department of Transportation, 14-73682, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, (San Francisco).
Repost from KTVU 2 News, Oakland, CA [Editor: an excellent investigative report, much of which was filmed here in Benicia. Apologies for the video’s commercial ad. – RS]
2 Investigates: Safety concerns over trains carrying volatile crude oil to Bay Area
By Simone Aponte, Nov 17, 2014
RICHMOND, Calif. – California used to receive all of its crude oil imports by ship and pipeline, but trains loaded with tanker cars full of oil are rolling through Bay Area neighborhoods with increasing frequency. And it’s a growing safety concern among experts who say rail imports will become much more common in the next few years, bringing millions of gallons of crude to local refineries. Much of that crude is a more volatile type of oil that has been linked to multiple derailments, fires, and deadly accidents.
2 Investigates followed trains rolling through neighborhoods in Richmond carrying millions of gallons of crude oil, in tanker cars that have been deemed unsafe by the federal government. And the railroad is not required to tell local officials how many of those cars are carrying a more volatile oil from the Bakken shale formation, which stretches from North Dakota and Montana into Canada.
The transport of Bakken crude by rail has been at the center of federal investigations and calls for increased safety standards. It’s delivered to the Kinder Morgan rail yard in Richmond, but local officials complain that they receive no notification of which trains are carrying Bakken crude.
Increased deliveries and increased danger
“These are trains that have up to 100 tank cars and those are filled with Bakken crude,” said Kelly Huston, Deputy Director with the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services (OES). “That’s an entire train full of a much more volatile type of crude oil than we typically see on rail.”
In January, the U.S. Department of Transportation issued a warning that Bakken’s light, sweet crude oil is prone to ignite at a lower temperature than traditional crude oils. Experts say lighter crudes contain more natural gas, and the vapors given off by the oil can ignite at much lower temperatures.
But the oil industry pushed back with its own study that disputed the government warning. The North Dakota Petroleum Council, which represents more than 500 oil companies operating in North Dakota and Montana, commissioned a $400,000 study of Bakken crude. It determined the oil’s characteristics are within the safety margin for the current fleet of rail tankers.
However, the state’s Rail Safety Working Group –convened by the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services (OES) – wasn’t convinced. It released a report that warns about the dangers of increasing the shipments of Bakken crude to California refineries. The report points to at least eight major train accidents involving Bakken crude trains in 2013 and 2014 alone.
“Incidents involving crude oil from the Bakken shale formation have been particularly devastating,” the authors warn.
Some of the most notable accidents include a derailment in Lac-Mégantic, Quebec on July 6, 2013. Sixty-three tank cars of crude oil exploded, killing 42 people. Five other people were also presumed to be dead, but were never recovered.
In 2012, about one million barrels of crude oil were delivered to California by rail. But by 2013 that number had jumped to about 6.3 million barrels. The California Energy Commission estimates that volume could increase by up to 150 million barrels, or 25% of total crude imports, by 2016.
According to the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), the primary source of the crude oil coming into California was from North Dakota, in early 2013. But by the end of that year, the state was receiving a dramatic increase in imports from Canada.
Old tanker cars
For more than twenty years, the federal government has been aware of major flaws in one of the most common tanker car designs used to transport crude oil across America.
According to a 1991 safety study from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), the DOT-111 tanker has a steel shell that is too thin to resist puncture during an accident, is vulnerable to tearing, and has exposed fittings and valves that can easily snap off during a rollover.
And DOT-111s make up nearly 70 percent of oil tanker cars currently in use in the U.S., according to the NTSB. Critics say that shipping volatile Bakken crude in these tankers poses an “unacceptable risk” to public safety.
In his Congressional testimony in February, NTSB board member Robert L. Sumwalt cited multiple train accidents and derailments involving Bakken crude transported in DOT-111 tanker cars.
“The NTSB continues to find that accidents involving the rupture of DOT-111 tank cars carrying hazardous materials often have violent and destructive results,” Sumwalt said.
“Federal requirements simply have not kept pace with evolving demands placed on the railroad industry and evolving technology and knowledge about hazardous materials and accidents.”
This past summer, the DOT announced that it would propose stricter rules for transporting flammable materials by rail car, including Bakken crude. The plan calls for DOT-111 tanker cars to be phased out, unless they can be retrofitted to meet the new standards.
Last month, Jack Gerard, president of the American Petroleum Institute, said that his group and the Association of American Railroads would jointly ask the DOT for six to 12 months for rail tank car manufacturers to prepare to overhaul tens of thousands of cars, and another three years to retrofit older cars.
But critics say the government’s plan doesn’t act swiftly enough.
Devora Ancel, a staff attorney with the Sierra Club, said the group has multiple concerns about Bakken crude trains coming into California, in particular in regards to the age of DOT-111 fleet.
“It is extremely alarming and the public should be concerned,” said Ancel. “It’s being carried in rail cars that are unsafe. They were designed in the 1960’s. They were not meant to transport highly volatile crude.”
The Sierra Club and Earthjustice submitted a petition to the DOT seeking an emergency order to ban the transportation of Bakken crude in DOT-111 tank cars. The petition acknowledges that the DOT’s proposal for stricter rules is a step in the right direction, but stresses that two years is too long to phase out the DOT-111 cars.
“The last few years have witnessed a surge in shipments of highly flammable crude from the Bakken region, mostly in unit trains with dozens and often more than 100 tank cars carrying explosive cargo. The growth in the number and length of trains carrying crude oil is staggering,” the petition said.
Two trainloads of Bakken crude roll into the Richmond Rail Terminal every month, according to the city’s fire department. But the fire officials tells KTVU that they’ve been reassured by Kinder-Morgan that the DOT-111 tank cars that make deliveries to Richmond have undergone additional safety modifications. Every individual tanker car carries more than 28,000 gallons of crude oil.
Tracking routes
Trains entering the Bay Area carrying crude oil from Canada and North Dakota must pass through parts of California that are considered hazardous routes, according to Huston. In the California Public Utilities Commission’s (CPUC) annual railroad safety report, released in July, the agency said California has had 58 train derailments in the last five years, and primary cause has been a problem with the track at so-called “hazard sites.”
The state’s OES report on rail safety also voiced concerns about risky routes being used to transport Bakken crude. The Rail Safety Working Group complained that crude oil rail transportation is not regulated adequately.
The report states that crude oil is “not transported with the level of protection mandated for the degree of hazard posed,” and also stressed there are “inadequacies in route planning to avoid population centers and environmentally sensitive areas, and a need for auditing rail carriers to ensure adequate response.”
One of OES’s biggest concerns is that it receives very little information about the Bakken crude trains’ schedules, and none of the data it does receive is in real time.
“Just like you would know where an Amtrak train is and whether is late to a station or not,” said Huston. “We should be able to know that about volatile substances like Bakken crude coming across our rail lines.”
Emergency response
The growing worries over the volatility of Bakken crude are particularly important for firefighters and other emergency responders who have to deal with derailments and possible fires.
According to the OES, the biggest areas of concern lie in the rural areas of Northern California, where emergency response crews are far from remote rail lines and wouldn’t be able to respond to a spill or fire quickly.
The OES report states that while there are emergency crews prepared to handle a crude tanker disaster in urban areas, “none are located near the high hazard areas in rural Northern California.” And HazMat teams that are located in more remote regions “are equipped to perform only in a support rather than lead role during a major chemical or oil incident.”
“If you get one of those trains derail and that stuff goes into the river that could affect an entire population’s water supply, which is, in some cases, worse than having a derailment in a population center,” said Huston.
Last month, the Valero-Benicia refinery Fire Chief Joe Bateman led a training session with local fire departments that focused on tanker car fires. They simulated a leak on an oil tanker car and practiced using foam to quell the vapors. A small group of Richmond firefighters will attend a similar training in December, according to the Richmond Fire Marshall.
The Valero-Benicia refinery is seeking a permit to bring in crude-by-rail shipments. They would join Richmond and a planned refinery in San Luis Obispo that would also be supplied with crude carried by train through the Bay Area.
But the idea is meeting resistance from worried neighbors.
Benicia’s city council must decide whether to approve a draft environmental impact report on the proposal. The $70 million terminal would receive two 50-car trainloads, carrying a total of about 70,000 barrels of crude oil, every day. The company has said that it will use newer tanker cars instead of the aging DOT-111s that have been involved in past accidents.
Chief Bateman insists that his crews are prepared if the worst should happen with a trainload of Bakken crude traveling through the Bay Area.
“I understand that it’s a big increase. I understand the public is concerned by that,” Chief Bateman said. “If you look at some of the other rail cars that are already on the tracks today… we’ve been shipping commodities for a long time.” Bateman points out that some of those other substances are more volatile than crude oil, such as liquefied petroleum gas.
When first responders arrive at chaotic train accident scene, all the black tanker cars essentially look the same. The contents are distinguished by a red, diamond-shaped placard on the side of the car that displays a four-digit code. The code for crude is 1267, but there is no way for emergency crews to tell if the oil inside is the volatile Bakken variety.
In April, Canada banned the older tanker cars and ordered the controversial design be phased out within three years. Last month, another train carrying crude oil derailed in Saskatchewan, involving the same kind of rail cars. There were no casualties in that accident.
“Incidents involving crude oil from the Bakken shale formation have been particularly devastating,” the authors warn.
And DOT-111s make up nearly 70 percent of oil tanker cars currently in use in the U.S., according to the NTSB. Critics say that shipping volatile Bakken crude in these tankers poses an “unacceptable risk” to public safety.
Two trainloads of Bakken crude roll into the Richmond Rail Terminal every month, according to the city’s fire department. But the fire officials tells KTVU that they’ve been reassured by Kinder-Morgan that the DOT-111 tank cars that make deliveries to Richmond have undergone additional safety modifications. Every individual tanker car carries more than 28,000 gallons of crude oil.
Last month, the Valero-Benicia refinery Fire Chief Joe Bateman led a training session with local fire departments that focused on tanker car fires. They simulated a leak on an oil tanker car and practiced using foam to quell the vapors. A small group of Richmond firefighters will attend a similar training in December, according to the Richmond Fire Marshall.
When first responders arrive at chaotic train accident scene, all the black tanker cars essentially look the same. The contents are distinguished by a red, diamond-shaped placard on the side of the car that displays a four-digit code. The code for crude is 1267, but there is no way for emergency crews to tell if the oil inside is the volatile Bakken variety.