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)
Iran agreement could spell end to limits on U.S. oil imports
By Emily Schwartz Greco, July 29, 2015
What a relief. In exchange for Iran taking steps to guarantee that it can’t build nuclear weapons, the sanctions that have choked off its access to world markets will end without a single shot.
Instead of celebrating this diplomatic breakthrough, conservative lawmakers are plotting to scuttle the pact. And despite their opposition, some Republicans are milking this accord for a pet project: ending all limits on U.S. crude sales.
“Any deal that lifts sanctions on Iranian oil will disadvantage American companies unless we lift the antiquated ban on our own oil exports,” Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski declared a few weeks back.
It’s an enticing argument. Why should Washington help Iran freely sell its oil while denying the U.S. industry the same liberty?
Well, the ban is already punctured. The United States, which imports 7 million barrels a day of crude, also exports half a million barrels of it every 24 hours.
And most of that oil goes straight to Canada by rail or gets hauled to ports by trains after getting extracted from North Dakota’s landlocked Bakken fields.
Remember that oil train that derailed two years ago in the Quebec town of Lac Megantic, unleashing an inferno that burned for four days and killed 47 people? It was ferrying exported Bakken crude.
Smaller accidents are happening too. Most recently, an oil train derailed near the tiny town of Culbertson, Montana, spilling thousands of gallons of oil from North Dakota.
Ramping up exports would only boost the chances of a major disaster, Oil Change International Executive Director Steve Kretzmann says.
That’s why the restrictions, imposed by Congress during Gerald Ford’s presidency to boost energy independence, should remain unless the government creates better safeguards.
Besides, Iranian oil sales won’t begin bouncing back until early next year at the soonest as diplomats must first verify compliance with nuclear obligations. But there’s no doubt that more crude will eventually gush from that Middle Eastern country.
Prior to the 1979 revolution that brought a theocratic government to power, Iran was exporting 6 million barrels a day — quadruple current levels. By 2008, amid lighter sanctions, it was only shipping 3 million barrels a day overseas. Seven years later, that figure has been halved again.
Iran’s got between 30 and 37 million barrels stored and ready to sell before it even re-starts wells that were shut down when sanctions tightened. As Iran sits atop some 158 billion barrels of oil, the world’s fourth-largest reserves, its potential is huge.
Will American companies, which can freely export value-added oil products like gasoline, lose out if they can’t ship more crude overseas? Not really.
Money spent beefing up infrastructure could be wasted if Iran dislodges new markets. Nixing export restrictions could boost production by half a million barrels daily, but many North American wells won’t make financial sense if the Iran gusher adds to the global glut responsible for slashing oil prices over the past 12 months.
Goldman Sachs analysts expect U.S. oil prices to hover around today’s $50-a-barrel mark for at least another year. If they’re right, many North Dakota and Texas fracking sites won’t be viable anyway.
And why are prices slumping? Domestic output has nearly doubled under President Barack Obama’s leadership to 9.7 million barrels a day. The United States now drills more oil than Saudi Arabia despite the White House’s calls for climate action.
While the leaky ban does chip away at U.S. prices, it’s not as if the Obama years have been a bust for oilmen.
And regardless of whether the industry gets the freedom Murkowski seeks, the United States, Iran, and the rest of the world must figure out how to get by on less oil.
Columnist Emily Schwartz Greco is the managing editor of OtherWords, a non-profit national editorial service run by the Institute for Policy Studies.
Senate to Debate 3-Year Delay for Rail Safety System
By Michael D. Shear, July 23, 2015
An Amtrak Acela train in New York bound for Pennsylvania Station. Amtrak has said it will complete installation of an advanced safety system for its trains in the Northeast Corridor by the current December 2015 deadline. Credit David Boe/Associated Press
WASHINGTON — Two months after the high-speed derailment of an Amtrak train killed eight people and injured hundreds more in Philadelphia, a Senate transportation bill headed for debate this week calls for a three-year delay of the deadline for installing a rail safety system that experts say would have almost certainly prevented the Pennsylvania accident.
Lawmakers from the Northeast and train safety experts expressed outrage over the provision, which is included in the 1,000-page legislation to finance highway and transit projects for the next three years. Several lawmakers vowed to fight the extension of the deadline to install the safety system, called positive train control, beyond December 2015.
“It should be done immediately. There shouldn’t be an extension,” said Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York. “Given the high number of accidents, and given the fact that P.T.C. is really effective, they should stick with 2015.”
Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut, said he was “deeply disturbed about yet another delay in a potential safety measure” until December 2018 and said the provision in the transportation bill “essentially makes the deadline a mirage.”
In 2008, after decades of delay, lawmakers gave railroad companies, including Amtrak, seven years to complete installation of the safety system, which monitors the speed of trains and automatically slows them down if they approach curves at dangerously high speeds.
The Amtrak train that derailed in Pennsylvania was going 106 miles an hour, more than twice the speed limit, when it careened off the tracks.
Since the accident, Amtrak has said it will meet the existing deadline for installing and activating the safety systems in the busy Northeast Corridor. Craig S. Schulz, a spokesman for the railroad, said Thursday that Amtrak “remains committed” to making good on that promise.
But many railroads across the country still have not installed and activated the necessary equipment and would face federal fines and other mandates if they continued operating past Dec. 31 without it.
The transportation spending measure in the Senate would require railroads to submit plans to the secretary of transportation that include installation of positive train control by the end of 2018.
The willingness to give railroads more time is especially galling to lawmakers from the Northeast, where the Pennsylvania accident highlighted the dangers to millions of riders in the most heavily traveled train corridor in the nation.
Mark V. Rosenker, a former chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board, which investigates train accidents, said he was outraged by the provision and blamed railroads’ lobbyists for pressuring lawmakers to include it.
“Obviously, the railroad lobbyists have gotten to Congress,” Mr. Rosenker said. “We just had a horrible accident. People died and people ended up becoming paralyzed when that technology was available to the railroad. I am very disappointed.”
Senator Bob Casey, Democrat of Pennsylvania, also commented on the timing of the proposal. “The idea that a provision to delay positive train control was slipped into this bill just a short time after the Amtrak 188 derailment is shocking and wrong,” he said. “Delaying P.T.C. is a bad idea, and this provision should be stripped out immediately.”
Officials at the Transportation Department are continuing to insist that railroads meet the current end-of-the-year deadline. And at the White House, the press secretary, Josh Earnest, spoke of concerns “about some of the safety provisions that are included in the bill” and said the administration would take a close look at those provisions.
But pressure is mounting in both parties to pass the transportation bill before the Highway Trust Fund runs out of money for road projects across the country. That could happen this summer if Congress does not approve a new long-term authorization for transportation spending. If the Senate passes its measure, it still must win passage in the House as well.
Several senators said concern about the rail safety provision could become a central part of the debate over the bill in the days ahead. Mr. Blumenthal said he disliked the language extending the deadline for railroads to install positive train control.
But in an interview, he said he might be able to accept a new deadline if Congress agreed to dedicate money from the Highway Trust Fund specifically for installation of the rail safety systems, especially for commuter train systems that are struggling to afford the equipment.
Mr. Blumenthal said he intended to propose amendments that would dedicate $570 million a year for three years to commuter-rail safety improvements. He said it was unclear whether Republicans, who control the Senate, would allow the amendments to be offered. And he said it was not certain how hard the Obama administration was willing to fight for them.
“I’m hoping they will lend the full weight of their authority,” he said. “It would make a difference.”
Backers of the deadline extension say they need it because the equipment is costly and time-consuming to install across thousands of miles of track.
They also say the provision gives the transportation secretary authority to reject railroad improvement plans on a case-by-case basis, which they said could leave some railroads subject to the current 2015 deadline. And they said the bill authorized the Transportation Department to prioritize money for rail safety even though it does not guarantee a specific amount of money to be spent from the trust fund.
Ed Greenberg, a spokesman for the Association of American Railroads, which represents freight and commuter systems, praised the provision, saying in a statement that it “sets a rigorous case-by-case framework with enforceable milestones that guarantees sustained and substantial progress, complete transparency and accountability, and a hard end date for full installation by 2018.”
But advocates of greater safety measures for trains said the railroads had been under orders to upgrade their safety systems for years and should have been able to meet the 2015 deadline, which was set by Congress after a California derailment in 2008 that killed 25 people.
Most Recent Oil Train Accidents and Spills Involved ‘Safer’ CPC-1232 Tank Cars
By Justin Mikulka | July 23, 2015 – 03:58
Roosevelt County chief deputy sheriff Corey Reum was one of the first responders to the recent Bakken oil train derailment in Montana, a few miles from the North Dakota border.
That is just one of the things first responders have learned since the deadly accident two years ago in Lac-Megantic. As a Globe and Mail article marking that two year anniversary recently noted, when the train was on fire and rail cars were exploding in Lac-Megantic, no one could figure out why.
The Globe detailed the questions the investigators were trying to answer in the aftermath.
And, perhaps most puzzling of all: How did the crude oil on the train – normally thought of as difficult to light on fire – cause the kind of violent explosions it did?
Now we know that the Bakken oil is different from most other crude, and based on the eight accidents since July 2013 involving derailed trains that involved Bakken oil and resulted in fires, first responders now know the risk the Bakken oil presents.
In Roosevelt County they evacuated a half-mile perimeter around the crash site as a precaution even though there was no fire.
However, despite the lack of fire in this latest accident, 35,000 gallons of oil did spill as four tank cars ruptured. And these were the newer CPC-1232 tank cars that the oil industry is currently suing to keep on the rails even longer than the new regulations allow — which for some 1232 tank cars is not until 2025.
Click to enlarge
There have now been six accidents involving oil trains in 2015 where tank cars derailed and were punctured and oil was spilled. In the first five, there were also fires and explosions.
All six oil train derailments involved the new 1232 model cars that the American Petroleum Institute is suing to keep on the tracks longer than existing long timelines in the new oil-by-rail regulations.
Even Cynthia Quarterman, the former administrator of the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, the agency responsible for the regulations, was surprised by the timelines in the final regulations.
“That was the biggest surprise, by far,” Quarterman told Argus Media. “The push-back for five years for most things, I thought it was a substantial push-back in terms of dates.”
So while we have learned quite a bit in the two years since Lac-Megantic, not much has changed in how Bakken oil is moved by rail.
The oil and rail industries are fighting the new regulation requirements for modern braking systems on the trains starting in 2021.
The oil will still be transported in the obviously inadequate CPC-1232 cars for up to ten years or longer if the oil industry wins its lawsuit.
So, as Sheriff Reum pointed out in his observation, the best strategy for communities along the oil train tracks across North America is to spend the next ten years or so hoping you get lucky.
