BNSF Engineer Who Manned Exploding North Dakota “Bomb Train” Sues Former Employer
By Steve Horn, April 2, 2015 13:54
A Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNSF) employee who worked as a locomotive engineer on the company’s oil-by-rail train that exploded in rural Casselton, North Dakota in December 2013 has sued his former employer.
Filed in Cass County North Dakota, the plaintiff Bryan Thompson alleges he “was caused to suffer and continues to suffer severe and permanent injuries and damages,” including but not limited to ongoing Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) issues.
Thompson’s attorney, Thomas Flaskamp, told DeSmogBlog he “delayed filing [the lawsuit until now] primarily to get an indication as to the direction of where Mr. Thompson’s care and treatment for his PTSD arising out of the incident was heading,” which he says is still being treated by a psychiatrist.
The lawsuit is the first of its kind in the oil-by-rail world, the only time to date that someone working on an exploding oil train has taken legal action against his employer using the Federal Employers’ Liability Act.
Image Credit: State of North Dakota District Court; East Central Judicial District
“Run for His Life”
In the aftermath of the Casselton explosion, rail industry consultant Sheldon Lustig told the Associated Press that freight trains carrying oil obtained via hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) in North Dakota’s Bakken Shale basin are akin to “bomb trains,” putting the now oft-used term on the map for the first time.
Since Casselton, several other oil-by-rail explosions and disasters have ensued in the U.S.
Thompson experienced the wrath of an exploding “bomb train” up close and personal.
Flaskamp told The Forum newspaper in Fargo, North Dakota that Thompson had to “run for his life” to escape the train he was manning once it derailed after colliding with an oncoming grain train.
“Behind him, tank cars were starting to derail, catch fire and explode,” Flaskamp told The Forum of Thompson, who is in his 30s and is currently in school to obtain a teaching degree.
The plaintiffs allege BNSF, owned by multi-billionaire Warren Buffett, violated the Federal Employers’ Liability Act in multiple ways.
They include “failing and neglecting to provide [Thompson] with a reasonably safe place to work” and “failing to warn [him] of the dangers of hauling explosive oil tank railcars and the tendencies of these railcars to rupture and explode upon suffering damage.”
Image Credit: State of North Dakota District Court; East Central Judicial District
Put another way, BNSF may have known quite a bit more about the danger of carrying Bakken fracked oil than it ever told Thompson. And that will likely serve as a contentious point in the case as it snakes its way forward in Cass County court.
“BNSF knew or should have known of the dangerous nature of the cargo it required its crews to transport and should have exercised great care in its transport,” Flaskamp told DeSmogBlog. “The Answer to the complaint which will be filed by the BNSF will be telling as to their theories of defense.”
Federal data: Not many oil trains for Keystone XL to displace
By Curtis Tate, McClatchy Washington Bureau, April 2, 2015
Miles of pipe ready to become part of the Keystone Pipeline are stacked in a field near Ripley, Okla, Feb. 1, 2012. SUE OGROCKI — AP
New data on crude oil shipments by rail released by the Department of Energy this week show that there are relatively few oil trains taking the path of the controversial proposed Keystone XL pipeline.
In its first monthly report on crude by rail, the U.S. Energy Information Administration shows that the bulk of oil shipments by rail are moving from North Dakota’s Bakken region to refineries in the mid-Atlantic and the Pacific Northwest.
Far less is moving from either Canada or the Midwest to the Gulf Coast, the location of 45 percent of U.S. refining capacity. Only about 5 percent of the crude oil moved by rail nationwide in January was bound for the Gulf Coast from either Canada or the Midwest.
A series of derailments has brought increased scrutiny to oil transportation by rail. Since the beginning of the year, four oil trains have derailed in the U.S. and Canada, leading to spills, fires and evacuations.
The White House Office of Management and Budget is reviewing new regulations intended to improve the safety of oil trains. They’re scheduled for publication next month.
Some supporters of the 1,700-mile Keystone project have claimed that it would reduce the need for rail shipments. The pipeline would have a projected capacity of 830,000 barrels a day, and would primarily move heavy crude oil from western Canada to the Gulf Coast.
The government’s new data confirms, however, that the primary flows of oil by rail are not to the Gulf Coast. Northeast refineries, concentrated in Delaware, Pennsylvania and New Jersey, have come to rely heavily on Bakken crude delivered by rail, and to a lesser extent, Canadian oil.
Oil trains have resulted in a 60 percent decline in oil imported to the East Coast from overseas countries, according to EIA.
Of the roughly 1 million barrels a day of oil that moved by rail in January, according to EIA, 914,000 barrels were from the Midwest petroleum-producing district that includes North Dakota, while another 130,000 barrels a day crossed the border from Canada.
In a report last month, the Energy Department projected that shipments of Canadian oil by rail could more than triple by 2016.
The mid-Atlantic region received 437,000 barrels a day from the Midwest district, and only 61,000 barrels from Canada. That’s roughly the equivalent of six or seven 100-car trains, each carrying about 3 million gallons.
Another 171,000 barrels a day from the Midwest, or about two to three 100-car trains, supplied West Coast refineries, mostly in Washington state.
The Gulf Coast region received only 107,000 barrels of oil a day from the Midwest and Canada combined. Another 107,000 barrels came from the Rocky Mountain petroleum-producing district, which includes the Niobrara region of Colorado and Wyoming.
Including oil that comes from west Texas or New Mexico, the equivalent of about three to four 100-car trains arrive at the Gulf Coast every day.
Why oil trains (don’t have to) explode: Everything you need to know
By Rob Davis | April 02, 2015 at 1:22 PM
Smoke and flames erupt from the scene of an Illinois oil train derailment March 5, 2015. Safety experts say regulators have ignored steps that would make oil trains less likely to go off like a bomb when they derail. (AP/Jessica Reilly)
Crude oil was never supposed to explode.
Then a train pulling 72 cars of it derailed in a tiny town in Quebec in July 2013. The oil turned into a mushroom cloud of flame. It looked terrifying. Watch the first minute of this video:
Forty-seven people were killed that night.
Since then, eight more trains hauling oil have derailed and erupted in flames, drawing scrutiny to a new phenomenon: Crude oil, which once primarily moved in ships and pipelines, is being hauled around North America by rail in unprecedented volumes. More than a million barrels a day now move that way.
The federal government, which regulates train safety, has slowly moved to make oil trains more secure. Regulators are focusing on strengthening the tank cars carrying the oil.
But safety experts say regulators have ignored steps that would make oil trains less likely to go off like a bomb when they derail.
Depending on where it is produced, oil can be dark and thick or light and free flowing. Different amounts of highly flammable gases like propane and butane can be dissolved in it, affecting its volatility. (These are what your backyard gas grill uses.)
Much of the oil moving by rail comes from North Dakota. And what’s coming out of the ground there has been unusually volatile. North Dakota crude moving in Oregon contains far higher levels of propane than similar types of oil.
Some North Dakota crude has been more volatile than gasoline. So when the trains have derailed, the flammable gases within have fueled those sky-high fireballs.
That doesn’t have to happen.
Michael Eyer, a retired Oregon hazardous materials train inspector, said federal regulators could impose a cap on the amount of flammable gas allowed in the oil.
“You would have a fire,” Eyer said. “But you would not have the mushroom cloud in the sky.”
Producers can strip out those highly flammable gases before the oil is loaded for shipment. The process is called stabilization. North Dakota oil regulators estimate it would add $2 to the cost of every barrel.
Less volatile oil could still burn in a derailment, Eyer said. But nearby residents and firefighters responding to train accidents would be safer: Those fireballs don’t just shoot up. They spread, too.
State regulators in North Dakota have set the first ever limit to tame the most volatile crude. It went into effect April 1. It requires a less-intense treatment process that North Dakota regulators estimate will cost 10 cents per barrel.
But Eyer and a crude oil expert say the limit is too high to have widespread impact. The oil that exploded in Quebec in 2013, for example, wouldn’t have been affected.
Harry Giles is a retired federal official who used to oversee crude oil quality for the country’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve. He said North Dakota’s limit should be set lower.
“It would increase the safety and lessen the risk,” Giles said. “Fires would be less intense.”
Compare this fire during a May 2011 derailment northwest of Portland near Scappoose. That’s ethanol — pure grain alcohol — burning. It’s far less volatile than North Dakota crude.
The fire was still dangerous. But firefighters were able to get close enough to put water on the cars. That’s a fire hose spraying at the top of the photo.
Now see what happened after a December 2013 derailment with crude oil in North Dakota.
Look close. That’s a train down there at the bottom.
Stricter limits would reduce the dangers faced by millions of people who live next to rail lines nationwide, Eyer said.
That includes Oregonians like Jamie Maygra, a retired ironworker who lives in Deer Island, along the state’s primary oil train route. He said he worries about the oil’s volatility every time he drives near an oil train with his 2- and 3-year-old granddaughters.
He said he’s frustrated that neither industry nor safety regulators have moved faster to keep people like his granddaughters safe.
“I think about that all the time,” Maygra said. “The chances of that happening are slim, but it’s a lot more with this oil. They don’t care about nothing but money. That’s what’s aggravating. They put profit before people.”
Federal safety regulators say they’re studying what makes the oil so flammable and what could be done. Tim Butters is the administrator of the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, the federal agency with authority to set limits. He recently told a Congressional committee his agency, known as PHMSA, is looking at ways to remove flammable gases from crude.
But the methods for doing that are already well known. They’re currently used in Texas oil fields, where flammable gases are separated and piped to nearby plants.
Eyer said the agency should move faster.
“The industry needs to figure out what the hell this stuff is and regulators need to say ‘We’re going to act now,’ ” he said. “How many rivers on fire and deaths are needed? What is the price?”
If federal regulators forced North Dakota producers to emulate what happens in Texas, those producers would have to burn or ship the gases they stripped from the oil. Currently, though, North Dakota does not have enough pipelines to move those flammable gases nor a market for them.
Susan Lagana, a PHMSA spokeswoman, said her agency is concerned about the volatility of oil moving by rail. But research is needed to determine exactly what makes the explosions so severe, she said, and what could be done to minimize them.
Eyer and Giles agreed that North Dakota’s volatility limits were too high, but they didn’t agree about what the right level is.
“That’s what we need to know,” Lagana said. “We are willing to consider all options to address making the product safer in transportation.”
The relevant research, being done by the federal Energy Department, should be finished this summer, Butters told Congress. But he didn’t promise any next steps once it’s done.
In the meantime, allowing producers to leave those flammable gases in the oil gives them more profit, allowing them to slightly bulk up the volumes they ship. It’s one reason the oil industry is fighting suggestions to stabilize North Dakota oil.
Don’t blame the oil for explosions, the industry argues. Blame the derailing trains.
“Keeping the trains on the tracks is the only way to ensure that crude… will be transported in the safest possible manner,” Charles Drevna, president of American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers recently wrote.
Solely focusing on tank cars and trains “is not enough,” Eyer said. “The starting point is always what are you putting into the car?”
A bill introduced recently in the U.S. Senate by Democratic Sens. Patty Murray, Maria Cantwell, Dianne Feinstein and Tammy Baldwin proposes limiting the volatility of oil moving by rail. They want the rules in place within two years.
It’s a sign that political leaders have realized the North Dakota oil poses unique risks that could be reduced. A spokeswoman for Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Oregon, said he is tracking the issue and continues talking to federal transportation officials to find ways to address it.
Train of thought: Citizens worry oil tankers traveling through Guadalupe to the Phillips 66 refinery could explode
By David Minsky, April 1, 2015
Residents worried that their town could become the scene of an oil tanker explosion voiced their concerns during a March 24 Guadalupe City Council meeting.
The Santa Maria Refinery property sits on the Nipomo Mesa, less than 5 miles away from Guadalupe, and that’s where owner Phillips 66 wants to build a rail spur to connect it to an existing Union Pacific Railroad line. Plans for a transfer station are in the works, too.
The project would change where the refinery gets oil and how the resource is delivered to the refinery, which currently receives most of its oil via pipeline from Northern Santa Barbara County. The rail spur could bring up to five 80-car trains per week carrying crude oil through downtown Guadalupe on the Union Pacific line. Union Pacific Railroad would be responsible for delivering the railcars, refinery spokesperson Jim Anderson said at the meeting.
On the table was whether or not the City Council would endorse a letter from 3rd District Santa Barbara County Supervisor Doreen Farr, who opposes the project. All sides—including representatives from Phillips 66, who encouraged the council to not take action on the letter in light of a yet-to-be completed environmental impact report; and the Mesa Refinery Watch Group, which opposes the project—made their cases before a packed house of politicians, residents, and journalists. The letter was secondary to the discussion, though. The real question that was debated: Is it safe to allow railcars of crude oil to pass through Guadalupe?
Citing more than 60 years of safe rail operations, Anderson said the extension is necessary for the refinery to maintain its present rate of crude oil processing. With Central Coast oil production in decline and a strong demand for fuel—only one of the many products refined from crude—in California, Anderson said the spur is needed.
“The only way to fill up and complete that 44,000-barrel-a-day rate is, rather than propose a marine terminal or a truck terminal with thousands of trucks on the highway, we felt that a rail terminal, which is sitting right next to the mainline railroad tracks, would be the best alternative,” Anderson said, adding that the trains would be similar to the ones that have rolled through Guadalupe in the last 10 years, but would be slightly longer.
At one point while Anderson was speaking, an audible train horn blared in the distance, prompting chuckles among the crowd.
The idea of oil trains wasn’t so funny to Laurance Shinderman, who spoke on behalf of the Mesa Refinery Watch Group, which formed to identify the negative impacts of the rail project. He noted the explosive potential of crude’s flashpoint—the temperature at which vapor forms and can ignite.
“The lower the flashpoint of the crude, the greater the risk,” Shinderman said, emphasizing that oil being shipped has a lower flashpoint. “I’m not a chemistry engineer, but I’ve done enough reading on this.”
He went on to cite several instances of tanker cars exploding or catching on fire, including the 2013 Lac-Megantic rail disaster in Quebec where multiple tankers carrying Bakken formation crude oil derailed and exploded, killing 47 people and destroying more than 30 buildings in a town roughly the size of Guadalupe.
Shinderman described the Phillips 66 proposal as “oil roulette.”
More people spoke against the spur after Shinderman, including Joyce Howerton, an aide who spoke on behalf of state Sen. Hannah-Beth Jackson (D-Santa Barbara). Amy Anderson, a Santa Maria resident and volunteer for the Santa Barbara County Action Network, briefly talked about empty oil tankers.
“An empty liquid petroleum gas tanker is actually even more explosive than a full one,” she said. “Once they start to explode, you can only hope the town’s been evacuated and there are no onlookers because the fragments from the exploding tankers will assault Guadalupe like shrapnel from a roadside bomb. That’s not an exaggeration.”
Neither minimizing nor enhancing the risk of danger, Guadalupe Police Chief Gary Hoving said his biggest concern is a lack of emergency resources to evacuate the city in the event of a tanker explosion. Citing a FEMA estimate, Hoving said a blast zone with shrapnel would be limited to about 1 1/4 miles. He recommended an evacuation zone of at least 7,000 feet.
“A derailment in the city of Guadalupe would necessitate an evacuation of the entire city,” Hoving said during the meeting. “The major concerns that I have are related solely to public safety … our lack of sufficient fire and police, especially for an initial response.”
The last train derailment in Guadalupe was in 2007, when several cars came off the track, including four that spilled cases of Corona beer.
Hoving also asked where the funding for additional resources would come from.
Phillips 66 spokesperson Anderson noted that his company is presently working with the governor’s office to place a fee on each barrel of oil that’s loaded and unloaded. The money collected would go into a state-level emergency services fund and provide money for increasing the capability of emergency response, he said.
The fate of the spur is still up in the air. At the end of the debate that Tuesday night, the city eventually voted 4-1 to not to take any action on endorsing Farr’s letter. Councilmember Ariston Julian dissented. Before the vote, Julian made a motion to endorse the letter, but it wasn’t seconded.
Julian expressed concern for the city’s water source and residents living immediately near the tracks—including the soon-to-be-built Pasadera housing development that broke ground on March 4—if an accident caused oil to spill or explode.
“In the unlikelihood that there is, we have a potential of losing people and also losing our water source,” Julian said.
