By David Morgan, Jul 29, 2015 3:35pm
An aerial view of burnt train cars after a train derailment and explosion in Lac-Megantic, Quebec July 8, 2013, in this picture provided by the Transportation Safety Board of Canada. REUTERS / Transportation Safety Board of Canada / Handout via Reuters
WASHINGTON | The Obama administration on Wednesday released a new regulation intended to prevent explosive rail disasters such as the 2013 oil train derailment that killed 47 people and destroyed part of Lac-Megantic, Quebec.
The new rule by the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) requires two qualified railroad employees to ensure that handbrakes and other safety equipment have been properly set on trains left unattended while carrying dangerous materials such as crude oil or ethanol.
A series of oil train accidents in recent years led the United States and Canada in May to announce sweeping new safety regulations that require more secure tank cars and advanced braking technology to prevent moving trains from derailing and spilling their contents.
The new rule is directed specifically at trains left parked on main lines, side tracks and in rail yards.
On July 6, 2013, an unattended 74-car freight train carrying crude oil from the Bakken field in North Dakota rolled downhill and derailed in the Canadian town of Lac-Megantic. The FRA said a leading cause was that the train had not been properly secured.
“Requiring that an additional, trained individual double check that the handbrakes have been set on a train will help stop preventable accidents,” acting FRA Administrator Sarah Feinberg said in a statement.
The new rule also contains requirements that involve briefings for train crews, exterior locks on locomotives and the proper use of air brakes. It applies to trains carrying substances that can cause harm if inhaled and any train carrying 20 or more cars of “high-hazard flammable materials.”
(Reporting by David Morgan; Editing by Dan Grebler)
Repost from McClatchyDC [Editor: Significant quote: “Illinois, Kentucky, Ohio, New York and Pennsylvania told McClatchy last month that they had received no updated oil train reports from CSX since June 2014.” See also the Federal Railroad Administration press release AND letter. – RS]
Feds warn railroads to comply with oil train notification requirement
By Curtis Tate, July 22,2015
This Feb. 17, 2015, photo made available by the Office of the Governor of West Virginia shows a derailed train in Mount Carbon, W.Va. U.S. transportation officials predict many more catastrophic wrecks involving flammable fuels in coming years absent new regulations. | Steven Wayne Rotsch AP
The U.S. Department of Transportation warned railroads that they must continue to notify states of large crude oil shipments after several states reported not getting updated information for as long as a year.
The department imposed the requirement in May 2014 following a series of fiery oil train derailments, and it was designed to help state and local emergency officials assess their risk and training needs.
In spite of increased public concern about the derailments, railroads have opposed the public release of the oil train information by numerous states, and two companies sued Maryland last July to prevent the state from releasing the oil train data to McClatchy.
The rail industry fought to have the requirement dropped, and it appeared that they got their wish three months ago in the department’s new oil train rule.
We strongly support transparency and public notification to the fullest extent possible. Sarah Feinberg, acting administrator, Federal Railroad Administration
But facing backlash from lawmakers, firefighters and some states, the department announced it would continue to enforce the notification requirement indefinitely and take new steps make it permanent.
There have been six major oil train derailments in North America this year, the most recent last week near Culbertson, Mont. While that derailment only resulted in a spill, others in Ontario, West Virginia, Illinois and North Dakota involved fires, explosions and evacuations.
In a letter to the companies Wednesday, Sarah Feinberg, the acting chief of the Federal Railroad Administration, told them that the notifications were “crucial” to first responders and state and local officials in developing emergency plans.
“We strongly support transparency and public notification to the fullest extent possible,” she wrote. “And we understand the public’s interest in knowing what is traveling through their communities.”
The letter was written after lawyers for Norfolk Southern and CSX used the new federal oil train rules to support their position in the Maryland court case that public release of the information creates security risks and exposes the companies to competitive harm.
Feinberg added that the notifications must be updated “in a timely manner.”
States such as California, Washington and Illinois have received updated reports regularly from BNSF Railway, the nation’s leading hauler of crude oil in trains. Most of it is light, sweet crude from North Dakota’s Bakken region and is produced by hydraulic fracturing of shale rock.
But to get to refineries on the east coast, BNSF must hand off the trains to connecting railroads in Chicago or other points. Illinois, Kentucky, Ohio, New York and Pennsylvania told McClatchy last month that they had received no updated oil train reports from CSX since June 2014.
The emergency order requires the railroads to report the weekly frequency of shipments of 1 million gallons or more of Bakken crude, the routes they use and the counties through which they pass. The railroads must update the reports when the volume increases or decreases by 25 percent.
Railroads found to be in violation of the requirement face a maximum penalty of $175,000 a day for each incident. The Federal Railroad Administration periodically audits railroads for compliance.
6 – Number of major oil train derailments in North America in 2015.
Though publicly available data on the exact volume of crude oil moved by railroads is difficult to come by, in an April earnings call, Norfolk Southern, the principal rival of CSX, reported that its crude oil volumes increased 34 percent from the first quarter of 2014 to the first quarter of 2015.
That’s not a reliable indicator of the increase in Bakken crude oil on any one route, but Illinois, Ohio and Pennsylvania did say they received updated oil train reports from Norfolk Southern in the past year.
Of the states on the CSX crude oil network McClatchy asked, only Virginia reported receiving an update in the year between June 2014 and June 2015, and that was a week after a CSX oil train derailed and caught fire in February near Mount Carbon, W.Va.
Rob Doolittle, a spokesman for CSX, said the railroad continues to be “in full compliance” with the emergency order. He added that the railroad “recently” sent new notifications to the affected states, “regardless of whether there was any material change in the number of trains transported.”
Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/economy/article28078114.html#storylink=cp
CSX Provides Update on W.Va. Oil Train Derailment Cleanup
By JOHN RABY Associated Press, Jul 21, 2015, 7:51 PM ET
GLEN FERRIS, W.Va. – CSX is continuing to closely monitor the environmental impact of a fiery oil-train derailment in southern West Virginia, a spokeswoman said Tuesday.The company held a public informational meeting that drew a sparse turnout Tuesday evening at the Glen Ferris Inn.
On Feb. 16, 27 cars of a CSX train’s 109 cars derailed during a snowstorm in Mount Carbon. Twenty of the cars leaked oil, some of which burned or was released into the ground.
Under a March consent order with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the railroad agreed to a long-term plan for cleaning up and restoring the area around the derailment.
“It’s important for the community to know that we said we would be here,” CSX spokeswoman Melanie Cost said. “This is part of that process. We want to keep the open dialogue for them.”
Donna Shabdue lives near the derailment site and was forced to evacuate her home for more than a day. She showed up to the meeting to voice her concerns about local emergency response and pleaded for quickly informing the public about future incidents.
“They need to have a plan,” she said. “We didn’t know what to do. There needs to be a siren somewhere go off to evacuate. We didn’t know what to do. I just want out of there safely.”
The train was carrying 3 million gallons of Bakken crude and headed to Yorktown, Virginia. In recent years, trains hauling crude from the Bakken region of North Dakota and Montana have been involved in fiery derailments in six states.
The Federal Railroad Administration is investigating the West Virginia accident, which shot fireballs into the sky, burned down a nearby house and caused fires on the ground that smoldered for days.
The cause of the derailment hasn’t been released. Speed had previously been ruled out as a factor. The FRA has said the train was going 33 mph at the time of the crash. The speed limit was 50 mph.
CSX said more than 181,000 gallons of crude oil was recovered after the accident. About 10,000 tons of soil has been removed and shipped for disposal. Additional soil removal is planned next to the Kanawha River and a tributary at the derailment site.
Air, water and soil sampling continues. The water monitoring is at five locations along the river, including a drinking water intake, because of the occasional presence of oil sheens. CSX said the local drinking water supply has been unaffected by the spill.
Oil-absorbing booms were attached to a metal wall more than 410 feet long in the river as an additional containment measure. The wall will eventually be taken down once the sheens are no longer detected, Cost said.
Cost declined to disclose how much the company has spent on the cleanup.
Officials: Oil train didn’t speed before Montana derailment
By Matthew Brown, July 20, 2015
BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — A train that derailed and spilled 35,000 gallons of oil in northeastern Montana was traveling within authorized speed limits, federal officials said Monday as they continued to probe the accident’s cause.
The Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway train loaded with crude from North Dakota was traveling 44 mph before Thursday’s wreck, U.S. Federal Railroad Administration spokesman Matthew Lehner said.
Officials have said the maximum authorized speed in the area is 45 mph.
Twenty-two cars on the BNSF train derailed near the small town of Culbertson. Lehner said the tank cars were a model known as the “1232,”which is built under a 2011 industry standard intended to be more crash-resistant than earlier designs.
But several recent oil train crashes, including some that caught fire, also involved 1232s, and federal officials said in May that the older cars must be phased out. The oil industry has challenged the timeline for the phase-out in federal court.
The stretch of track where last week’s derailment occurred is inspected at least four times a week, said Matt Jones, a spokesman for the Fort Worth, Texas-based company. Jones did not immediately respond to a request for details on the latest inspection.
Derailed oil tanker cars lie off track near Culbertson, Mont., Friday, July 17, 2015. The tank cars were hauling fuel from North Dakota and derailed Thursday in rural northeastern Montana, authorities said. (AP Photo/Richard Peterson)
The accident triggered a temporary evacuation of nearby homes and a camp for oil-field workers.
No one was hurt, and no fire or explosion occurred. But oil leaked from four of the cars. Officials said the spill was quickly contained, and there was no immediate evidence that any crude reached a waterway.
Federal Railroad Administration spokesman Michael Cole said Monday the train was bound for the Cherry Point refinery, operated by oil company BP near Ferndale, Washington. The agency had said previously that the shipment was headed to a refinery in Anacortes, Washington.
The spill marked the latest in a series of wrecks across the U.S. and Canada that have highlighted the safety risks of moving crude by rail.
In recent years, trains hauling crude from the Bakken region of North Dakota and Montana have been involved in fiery derailments in six states. In 2013, a runaway train hauling crude from the Bakken derailed and exploded in Lac-Megantic, Quebec, incinerating much of its downtown and killing 47 people.
North Dakota regulators in April began requiring oil producers to treat their crude before it can be loaded onto rail cars, to reduce the concentration of volatile gases that can trigger an explosion. Statoil, which was shipping the oil involved in last week’s crash, was in compliance with the new regulations, company spokesman Peter Symons said.
Cleanup work along the BNSF line near Culbertson continued Monday, said Daniel Kenney, an enforcement specialist with the Montana Department of Environmental Quality.
BNSF has been asked to sample underground water supplies in the vicinity of the crash as a precaution, Kenney said. For most spills, the state expects cleanup work to be completed and a final report submitted to regulators within 90 says, Kenney said. He added that might not be the case with Thursday’s derailment given the large volume of oil spilled.
Speed restrictions put in place following the derailment were lifted Monday on nearby U.S. Highway 2, the region’s main artery.
