Tag Archives: explosion

Forest Ethics takes on Crude by Rail

Repost from Forest Ethics
[Editor: This excellent Forest Ethics article also posts 3 succinct summaries: The Issue – Crude by rail puts our communities and environment at risk (read more…), The Facts – There are facts about the increase of crude by rail in North America that cannot be argued with (read more…), and The Solutions – We’re taking action to stop dangerous crude by rail projects in North America (read more…).  – RS]

Crude by Rail Isn’t the Way Forward

ForestEthics.org_BayArea

We’re mobilizing to oppose new crude by rail proposals that threaten our communities, our watersheds, and our climate. To put it simply, it is unacceptable that unsafe, outdated tank cars would be carrying extremely explosive oil through towns and cities across North America.

We look to the town of Lac Megantic, Quebec, where an oil by rail disaster killed 47 people, and we say never again. We will stop a similar tragedy before it starts by speaking up against crude by rail and demanding that it ends.

How did crude by rail become such a dangerous issue in the first place? Well, tar sands pipelines like Keystone XL, or Enbridge and Kinder Morgan in Canada, are hotly debated issues in today’s political arena. To stop the toxic oil, we’re talking to each other, organizing town hall meetings, and attending rallies. We’re building a wave of resistance to dirty energy. The outcry over pipelines and tankers has left big oil companies scrambling to find new ways of moving oil.

In enters oil by rail, the ugly kid brother of pipelines, that’s sprouting like a teenage weed and hoping that no one will notice. In North America oil by rail has grown a whopping 4,100% since 2008. There’s been enormous growth but little public debate, or even awareness.


Most citizens and elected officials haven’t even had a chance to talk about oil by rail. Not to sound like a teenager, but that’s totally unfair.

We’re willing to bet that a small-town, salt-of-the-earth family is much more likely to be impacted by a rail catastrophe than an oil executive. With communities on the front lines, communities need to have their voices heard.

So we’re leading the charge to halt new crude-by-rail terminals, as proposals spring up all along the West, Gulf, and Atlantic coasts of North America. But we won’t be able to do this without help and input from people like you.

We’re holding events up and down West Coast, and we’re petitioning our public officials. Are you in?

Latest News

We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: the only safe way to transport crude is to not transport it at all.
Last Wednesday, another oil train exploded less than ten blocks from downtown Lynchburg, Virginia
“It’s down to us–by which I mean you, me, and everyone we know–to demand that oil by rail is doesn’t put lives in danger”

Chicago, nation’s busiest rail hub: firefighters unprepared, lacking foam and equipment

Repost from the Chicago Tribune

Area poorly prepared for crude-oil train fires

Stocks of firefighting foam few and far between

By Richard Wronski, Tribune reporter  |  May 25, 2014
Cherry Valley accidentIn 2009, a Canadian National freight train hauling 75 tank cars with ethanol derailed and erupted into a massive fireball in Cherry Valley, near Rockford. Although firefighters had about 400 gallons of foam on hand and more on the way, they concluded it wasn’t enough to put out the fire. (National Transportation Safety Board / June 19, 2009)

Few Chicago-area fire departments have enough firefighting foam and equipment to respond effectively to the roaring infernos seen near Rockford and elsewhere in recent years when multiple railroad tank cars carrying flammable liquids derail and explode, the Tribune has found.

So-called unit trains, rolling pipelines with more than a hundred tank cars hauling millions of gallons of crude oil, have become game changers for emergency responders, posing new threats and requiring updated safety strategies, experts say.

Such trains have become a common sight in the Chicago area, the nation’s busiest rail hub. Each day, one-fourth of U.S. freight traffic — nearly 500 freight trains and 37,500 rail cars — passes through the city and suburbs, experts say, although it’s unknown exactly how much of this traffic is crude oil.

Yet, the majority of communities lack the thousands of gallons of foam and equipment — like airport “crash trucks” — to respond immediately and effectively to smother flames fueled by one or more railroad tank cars, officials say.

Most fire departments stock only enough 5-gallon containers of foam to extinguish fires involving vehicles and tanker trucks. Larger incidents, involving train loads of flammable liquids, would overwhelm individual departments, officials say.

“We couldn’t carry enough 5-gallon drums and couldn’t switch them out fast enough to get that kind of foam on a tank car or any fire like that,” said Jim Arie, Barrington’s fire chief. “That requires very specialized equipment and personnel.

“It’s truly the worst-case scenario for a fire department, and it’s not the kind of thing you can staff for or have enough equipment for.”

These days, tank-car trains run frequently through scores of suburbs on the tracks that Canadian National Railway Co. acquired in 2009 from the Elgin, Joliet & Eastern Railway, Arie said.

“We may be two years, five years or 12 years before we have an incident. We can’t staff up for that every day, day in, day out, knowing that it may be way down the road before something happens,” Arie said.

In Aurora, which has nine fire engines and 195 firefighters, including a 27-member hazardous-materials team, a fiery derailment would result in a “major disaster,” said Chief John Lehman. Both the Canadian National and the BNSF Railway Co. run tank-car trains through Aurora.

“We could do all the training in the world and have all the equipment in the world, but if one of those (trains) comes off the rails and creates an issue in a very densely populated area, our exposure would be very significant,” Lehman said. “Our ability to deal with an incident of that magnitude would be very taxing.”

Nationwide, crude shipments have grown from 9,500 carloads in 2008 to more than 400,000 in 2013, according to the Association of American Railroads.

The industry stands by its performance, saying more than 99.9 percent of its shipments arrive safely, according to the railroad association.

To deal with any large-scale emergency, nearly all of the state’s 1,200 fire departments depend on each other for help as part of the Mutual Aid Box Alarm System, or MABAS. Besides responding to major events like fires and natural disasters, MABAS also has 42 specialized operations teams for hazardous materials.

MABAS mobilized crews and equipment from several departments June 19, 2009, when a Canadian National freight train hauling 75 tank cars with ethanol derailed and erupted into a massive fireball in Cherry Valley, near Rockford.

Although firefighters had about 400 gallons of foam on hand and more on the way, they concluded it wasn’t enough to put out the roaring fire, which eventually spread to 13 tank cars, said Steve Pearson, who was then chief of the North Park Fire Protection District in Machesney Park.

Unable to get close enough to attack the intense flames, which rose hundreds of feet high, firefighters could do little but let the blaze burn itself out and go into a “defensive position” a half-mile away, Pearson told the National Transportation Safety Board forum on railroad safety last month.

“Even if we had an endless amount of foam, it could not have been safely applied to this incident,” he said.

But firefighters stress the importance of responding to such incidents as swiftly as possible with ample foam before they get out of control.

Although some people were rescued, a 44-year-old woman in a car stopped at the train crossing was fatally burned and several others were injured. Her pregnant 19-year-old daughter lost her baby.

It wasn’t until 5 p.m. the next day, nearly nine hours after the derailment, that all fires were extinguished and residents could return to about 600 homes that were evacuated, Pearson said.

Increased risks

The roster of fiery derailments has steadily grown along with the flow of volatile crude oil from the booming Bakken fields of North Dakota, Montana and Canada.

Nine oil train derailments have occurred in the U.S. and Canada since March 2013, several resulting in intense fires and evacuations, according to the NTSB.

By far the worst occurred when a runaway oil train derailed and exploded July 3, 2013, in Lac-Megantic, Quebec. Sixty-three tank cars spilled more than 1.3 million gallons of oil. Forty-seven people were killed and 30 buildings destroyed, officials said.

Earlier this month, Canadian officials charged the railroad — which was then owned by Rosemont-based Rail World Inc. — and three of its employees with criminal negligence in connection with the incident.

Reacting to the spate of incidents, the NTSB convened a two-day forum last month in Washington to address the safety of shipping crude oil and ethanol by rail. More than 20 fire officials, federal administrators, railroad and tank car industry representatives, and other experts testified.

One focus was the crash-worthiness of the tank cars. The NTSB has warned for decades that older-model cars like those involved in the Cherry Valley incident, known as DOT-111s, are prone to rupture in a derailment.

The Canadian government has ordered a phaseout of the DOT-111s over the next three years unless they’re retrofitted with better protection in case of derailment. So far, the U.S. Department of Transportation has only recommended that shippers avoid using the DOT-111s “to the extent possible.”

The U.S. is being “extremely lethargic and to some extent irresponsible” in not dealing with the DOT-111s, said Aurora Mayor Tom Weisner, who, with Barrington Village President Karen Darch, is co-chairman of a coalition of communities pushing for more tank-car safety measures.

“The bureaucracy of it all is literally costing people’s lives, and the potential catastrophe before us, unless something is done, is scary,” Weisner said.

Officials at the NTSB forum called for greater community awareness, enhanced planning and preparedness, and improved training for emergency responders.

“While most fire-service personnel are generally familiar with flammable and combustible liquid emergencies, we know from recent catastrophic events that the amount of product being transported via unit trains exceeds our current response capabilities,” Richard Edinger, vice chairman of the International Association of Fire Chiefs, told the forum.

One strategy would be to establish stockpiles of foam at key locations along rail lines where crude oil and other hazardous materials are shipped. Currently, such supplies are few and far between and would probably arrive too late to quell an inferno, experts say.

Increasing supplies of foam would require fire departments, organizations like MABAS and the Illinois Emergency Management Agency to evaluate their current equipment supplies, officials say.

Although the state agency would coordinate the statewide response to a large-scale emergency, it maintains no inventory or list of foam stockpiles, a spokeswoman said.

The agency, however, is considering the possibility of contracting with foam manufacturers to provide the product on short notice, she said.

Combined with water, foam works by smothering combustible liquid fires, suppressing vapors and cooling the fuel and other surfaces. Applying water alone to a crude oil or ethanol fire will spread the flames.

Generally, only refineries, chemical plants and airports have extensive supplies of firefighting foam and special tanker trucks to spray it quickly, experts say.

The Chicago Fire Department has several crash trucks with foam on hand at O’Hare International and Midway airports. Whether the trucks have sufficient foam to respond to a fiery derailment and could be sent elsewhere in the city or suburbs is unclear.

Despite several requests from the Tribune, the city of Chicago and the Chicago Fire Department did not respond to questions about the city’s foam capability.

Canadian National doesn’t stock foam along its routes, but it is “aware of significant foam locations along (the) system which could be called upon during an incident,” a spokesman said.

As evidenced by Cherry Valley, however, it’s questionable whether those stocks could get to the scene of a crude oil disaster quickly enough.

‘Skin in the game’

One community with a significant store of foam is the village of Bedford Park. Close to Midway, the village is the site of several chemical plants, liquid bulk-storage terminals and a large railroad switching yard.

Chief Sean Maloy said his village is a MABAS division headquarters and is well-equipped and trained to deal with most hazmat situations. It has several hundred gallons of foam — much of it stored on a trailer — that could be offered to other communities in an emergency.

“We’ve got a lot of foam available to us. It’s a matter of getting it there quickly,” he said. “It comes down to how much foam you can bring at one time.”

Some experts and public officials have suggested that companies benefiting from the boom in crude oil such as oil producers, tank-car owners and railroads pay a per-gallon fee to help fund training and programs to prepare for emergencies.

Such a fee was proposed in January by Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel before a meeting of the U.S. Conference of Mayors in Washington.

On Tuesday, Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton signed a law to collect $2.5 million annually from railroad and oil pipeline companies to help first responders get ready for derailments and spills involving oil and other hazardous substances.

Jay Reardon, the head of Illinois’ MABAS, said that the risk posed by crude oil shipments should prompt local municipal officials to re-evaluate the ability of their fire departments to provide adequate mutual aid responses.

If Illinois were to set such a fee, Reardon said, the money could fund groups like MABAS to stockpile foam and provide additional hazmat training.

“If there are companies who are making money on this, then don’t they have skin in the game?” Reardon asked. “Shouldn’t they be charged a minute portion, and that money go into a pool to fund risk mitigation?”

Bakersfield High School worst-case derailment scenario

Repost from the Bakersfield Californian
[Editor: this is a MUST READ article, a comprehensive and graphic description of first-responder requirements and readiness.  Someone needs to interview first responders in each of our Bay Area refinery towns, ask every single question referenced in this article, and lay out similar scenarios for the all-too-imaginable catastrophes that threaten our communities.  – RS]

Increased oil train traffic raises potential for safety challenges

By John Cox, Californian staff writer  |  May 17, 2014
Bakersfield High School is seen in the background behind the rail cars that go through town as viewed from the overpass on Oak Street.  By Casey Christie / The Californian
Bakersfield High School is seen in the background behind the rail cars that go through town as viewed from the overpass on Oak Street. By Casey Christie / The Californian

First responders think of the rail yard by Bakersfield High School when they envision the worst-case scenario in Kern County’s drive to become a major destination for Midwestern oil trains.  If a derailment there punctures and ignites a string of tank cars, the fireball’s heat will be felt a mile away and flames will be a hundred feet high. Thick acrid black smoke will cover an area from downtown to Valley Plaza mall. Burning oil will flow through storm drains and sewers, possibly shooting flames up through manholes.

Some 3,000 BHS students and staff would have to be evacuated immediately. Depending on how many tank cars ignite, whole neighborhoods may have to be cleared, including patients and employees at 194-bed Mercy Hospital.  State and county fire officials say local 911 call centers will be inundated, and overtaxed city and county firefighters, police and emergency medical services will have to call for help from neighboring counties and state agencies.

While the potential for such an accident has sparked urgency around the state and the country, it has attracted little notice locally — despite two ongoing oil car offloading projects that would push Kern from its current average of receiving a single mile-long oil train delivery about once a month, to one every six hours.

One project is Dallas-based Alon USA Energy Inc.’s proposed oil car offloading facility at the company’s Rosedale Highway refinery. The other is being developed near Taft by Plains All American Pipeline LP, based in Houston.

Kern’s two projects, and three others proposed around the state, would greatly reduce California’s thirst for foreign crude. State energy officials say the five projects should increase the amount of crude California gets by rail from less than 1 percent of the state’s supply last year to nearly a quarter by 2016.

But officials who have studied the BHS derailment scenario say more time and money should be invested in coordinated drills and additional equipment to prepare for what could be a uniquely difficult and potentially disastrous oil accident.

Bakersfield High Principal David Reese met late last year with representatives of Alon, which hopes to start bringing mile-long “unit trains” — two per day — through the rail yard near campus.

He said Alon’s people told him about plans for double-lined tank cars and other safety measures “to make me feel better” about the project. But he still worries.

“I told them, ‘You may assure me but I continue to be concerned about the safety of my students and staff with any new (rail) project that comes within the vicinity of the school,'” he said.

Alon declined to comment for this story.

Both projects aim to capitalize on the current price difference between light crude on the global market and Bakken Shale oil found in and around North Dakota. Thanks to the nation’s shale boom, the Midwest’s ability to produce oil has outpaced its capacity to transport it cheaper and more safely by pipeline. The resulting overabundance has depressed prices and prompted more train shipments.

There are no oil pipelines over the Rockies; rail is the next best mode of shipping oil to the West Coast. Kern County is viewed as an ideal place for offloading crude because of its oil infrastructure and experience with energy projects. Two facilities are proposed in Northern California, in Benicia and Pittsburg; [emphasis added] the other would be to the south, in Wilmington.

A local refinery, Kern Oil & Refining Co., has accepted Bakken oil at its East Panama Lane plant since at least 2012. The California Energy Commission says Kern Oil receives one unit train every four to six weeks.

NATIONAL CHANGES

Shipments of Bakken present special safety concerns. The oil has been found to be highly volatile, and the common mode of transporting it — in quick-loading trains of 100 or more cars carrying more than 3 million gallons per shipment — rules out the traditional safety practice of placing an inert car as a buffer between two containing dangerous materials.

The dangers of shipping Bakken crude by unit train have been evident in several fiery derailments over the past year. One in July in Lac-Megantic, Quebec, Canada, killed 47 people and destroyed 30 buildings when a 74-car runaway train jumped the tracks at 63 mph.

The U.S. Department of Transportation said 99.9 percent of U.S. oil rail cars reached their destination without incident last year. Two of its divisions, the Federal Railroad Administration and the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, have issued emergency orders, safety advisories and special inspections relating to oil car shipments. New rules on tank car standards and operational controls for “high-hazard flammable trains” are in the federal pipeline.

Locally operating companies Union Pacific Railroad Co. and BNSF Railway Co. signed an agreement with the DOT to voluntarily lower train speeds, have more frequent inspections, make new investments in brake technology and conduct additional first-responder training.

Until new federal rules take effect next year, railroads can only urge their customers to use tank cars meeting the higher standards.

“UP does not choose the tank car,” Union Pacific spokesman Aaron Hunt wrote in an email. “We encourage our shippers to retrofit or phase out older cars.”

The San Joaquin Valley Railroad Co., owned by Connecticut-based Genesee & Wyoming Inc., is a short line that carries Kern Oil’s oil shipments and would serve the Plains project but not Alon’s. A spokesman said SJVR is working with the larger railroads to upgrade its line, and the company inspects tracks ahead of every unit train arrival, among other measures designed just for oil shipments.

STATE LEVEL PROPOSALS

Gov. Jerry Brown has proposed a big change in the way California protects against and responds to oil spills.

His 2014-15 budget calls for $6.7 million in new spending on the state’s Oil Spill Prevention and Administration Fund to add 38 inland positions, a 15 percent staffing increase. Currently the agency focuses on ocean shipments, which have been the norm for out-of-state oil deliveries in California.

To help pay for the expansion, Brown wants to expand a 6.5 cent-per-barrel fee to not only marine terminals but all oil headed for California refineries.

“We’ll have a more robust response capability,” said Thomas Cullen, an administrator at the Office of Spill Prevention and Response, which is within the state Department of Fish and Wildlife.

A representative of the oil trade group Western States Petroleum Association criticized the proposal March 19 at a legislative joint hearing in Sacramento. Lobbyist Ed Manning said OSPR lacks inland reach, and that giving such responsibilities to an agency with primarily marine experience “doesn’t really respond to the problem.”

WSPA President Catherine Reheis-Boyd has emphasized the group has not taken a position on Brown’s OSPR proposal.

Also at the state capitol, Assemblyman Roger Dickinson, D-Sacramento, has forwarded legislation requiring railroads to give first responders more information about incoming oil shipments and publicly share spill contingency plans. The bill, AB 380, would also direct state grants toward local contingency planning and training. It is pending before the Senate Environmental Quality Committee.

LOCAL PREPARATIONS

In recent years Kern County has conducted large-scale, multi-agency emergency drills to prepare for an earthquake, disease outbreak and Isabella Dam break. There has not been a single oil spill drill.

Emergency service officials say that’s not as bad as it sounds because disasters share common actions — notification, evacuation, decontamination.

Nevertheless, State Fire and Rescue Chief Kim Zagaris, County Fire Chief Brian Marshall and Kern Emergency Services Manager Georgianna Armstrong support the idea of local oil spill drills involving public safety agencies, hospitals and others.

Kern County is well-versed at handling hazardous materials. Some local officials say an oil accident may actually be less dangerous than the release of toxic chemicals, which also travel through the county on a regular basis.

There have been recent accidents, but all were relatively minor.

Federal records list 18 oil or other hazardous material spills on Kern County railroads in the last 10 years. No one was injured; together the accidents caused $752,000 in property damage.

Most involved chemicals such as sodium hydroxide and hydrochloric acid. Only two resulted in crude oil spills, both in 2013 in the 93305 ZIP code in the city of Bakersfield. Together they spilled a little more than a gallon of oil.

But the risk of spills rises significantly as the volume of oil passing through the county grows.

“The volume is a big deal,” Bakersfield Fire Chief Douglas R. Greener said. “Potentially, if you have a train derail, you could see numerous cars of the same type of material leaking all at once.”

Kern County firefighters are better prepared for an oil spill than many other first responders around the state. They train on an actual oil tanker and have special tools to mend rail car punctures and gashes. The county fire department has several trucks carrying spray foam that suffocates industrial fires.

But Chief Marshall acknowledged a bad rail accident could strain the department’s resources.

He has been speaking with Alon about securing additional firefighting equipment and foam to ensure an appropriate response to any oil train derailment related to the company’s proposed offloading facility.

What comes of those talks is expected to be included in an upcoming environmental review of the project.

“We recognize the need to increase our industrial firefighting program,” Marshall said.

Chief Zagaris said Kern’s proximity to on-call emergency agencies in Tulare, Kings and Los Angeles counties may come in handy under the Bakersfield High spill scenario, which is based on fire officials’ assessments and reports from several similar incidents over the past year.

He and Marshall would not estimate how many people would require evacuation in the event of a disaster near the school, or what specific levels of emergency response might become necessary.

But Zagaris said local public safety officials would almost certainly require outside help to assess injuries, transfer people in need of medical care, secure the city and contain the spill itself.

“I look at it as, you know, depending what it is and where it happens will dictate how quickly” outside resources would have to be pulled in, he said.

Refiners’ lobby says DOT-111 is “fine” for shipping Bakken crude

Repost from Railway Age

Refiners’ lobby says DOT-111 is “fine” for shipping Bakken crude

Written by  David Thomas, Contributing Editor  | May 19, 2014

Operators of the U.S. fleet of DOT-111 tank cars are fighting the emerging consensus that the cars and their contents are the key culprits in the succession of oil train conflagrations that started last July 6 at Lac-Mégantic, Quebec.

Keeping trains on the tracks should be the priority in the reform of crude-by-rail, said the Washington-based policy advocate for the petroleum refiners that own much of the North American tank car fleet.

Too much focus is on the presumed weaknesses of the DOT-111 general-purpose tank car and on the particular properties of crude oil fracked from Bakken shale, said the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers (AFPM) in a May 14 submission to the U.S. Department of Transportation. Both are safe for haulage, the refiners argue in a contrarian view that rubs against the otherwise unanimous opinion of accident investigators, regulators, and railroaders that the DOT-111 and Bakken oil are an unacceptably risky pairing.

In an interview with Railway Age May 16, AFPM president Charles Drevna asked: “Can we have an intellectually honest discussion about mechanical and track integrity on the rails? You shouldn’t blame the cargo for an accident.”

At the same time, Canada’s oil shippers are resisting any requirement that they cover their consignments with public liability insurance. Legal and financial responsibility for the consequences of rail accidents should remain entirely with railroads and railroad insurers, the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers and the Canadian Fuels Association argued in a joint submission to a Transport Canada review arising from the Lac-Megantic accident.

Both Canadian Class I railroads and the Railway Association of Canada submitted that shippers should indeed insure their cargos against loss of life and environmental damages. Furthermore, CN and CP want the right to refuse consignments they judge to be too dangerous. Currently, as common carriers, railroads in both the U.S. and Canada are obliged to haul any legal cargo in authorized containers.

Thus, as the anniversary of the Lac-Mégantic catastrophe approaches, what had seemed to be a public consensus that the ultra-light Bakken crude is inherently too volatile for DOT-111 carriage is fracturing into open dispute between oil shippers and rail carriers.

“As the standards are today for flammable liquids, Bakken crude fits right in, and the DOT-111 cars should be fine,” Drevna said.

While the AFPM supports regulatory adoption of the 2011 standard proposed by a cross-industry committee, Drevna said he doubts that Canada’s phase-out of DOT-111s can be accomplished within the three-year timeline. Any additional new tank car specification beyond the industry-sponsored CPC-1232 standard should be delayed until comprehensive derailment data has been collected and analyzed.

No practical tank car would have survived the 64-mph derailment of Montreal, Maine & Atlantic’s runaway at Lac-Mégantic, said Frits Wybenga of Dangerous Goods Transport Consulting, who on behalf of AFPM analyzed a survey of Bakken oil samples by organization members. “You can’t design-out a tank car rupturing in those circumstances. You can make them heavier and heavier and make a tank car that would withstand those forces, but you wouldn’t be able to carry much crude oil in it.”

Products considerably more hazardous are routinely and legally transported in DOT-111 cars and Bakken crude should continue to be classified and transported like any other Class 3 flammable liquid under the Hazardous Materials Regulations (HMR), said the AFPM.

“Bakken crude oil currently is transported in compliance with the HMR as a Class 3 Flammable Liquid in either Packing Group I, II, or III. In conclusion, there is no identifiable basis for regulating Bakken crude differently than other flammable liquids regulated by the DOT Hazardous Materials Regulations,” says the AFPM submission to DOT.

The AFPM report included an assessment of routine assays performed by its own members in the course of loading and receiving Bakken crude. With just one exceptionally high concentration of hydrogen sulfide among the 1,400 samples drawn between loading terminals and destination refineries, the AFPM concludes that Bakken crude falls comfortably within Class 3 Flammable Liquid specifications for carriage in DOT-111 cars. Furthermore, the DOT-111 was a safe vessel for any flavor of crude oil—providing railroads keep the cars on the tracks.

“Bakken crude oil was found to be well within the limits for what is acceptable for transportation as a flammable liquid,” the AFPM reported. “Bakken crude oil was compared with other light crude oils and determined to be within the norm in the case of light hydrocarbon content, including dissolved flammable gases. Measured tank car pressures show that even the older DOT-111s authorized to transport Bakken crude oil are built with a wide margin of safety relative to the pressures that rail tanks may experience when transporting Bakken crude oil.”

The report relies substantially on the “Reid Vapor Pressure” test, which was abandoned in 1990 for U.S. hazmat classification in favor of the dual criteria of whether a material is liquid or gas at 20°C (68°F) or, alternatively, has a vapor pressure of more than 300 kPa (43.5 psia) at 50°C (122°F). The Reid test remains a common industry measure of vapor pressure at 100°F (38°C) and transposes accurately to the HMR-approved pressure scale, says the AFPM.

“AFPM and its members appreciate the concerns raised in relation to rail transport of Bakken crude oil and stand ready to work cooperatively with DOT and other governmental organizations to ensure the safe transportation of Bakken crude oil,” the report says. “This survey shows that Bakken crude oil does not pose risks that are significantly different than other crude oils and other flammable liquids authorized for transportation as flammable liquids.”