Tag Archives: Federal Regulation (U.S.)

Crude By Rail, DOT-111, Federal Regulation (U.S.), Funding for emergency response, Rail inspection, Tank car retrofit

Senate appropriations bill takes on safety of shipping oil by rail

December 17, 2014 Roger Straw

Repost from TribLIVE, Pittsburgh, PA

Safety of shipping oil by rail addressed in appropriations bill

By Jodi Weigand, Dec. 17, 2014

Provisions pushed by U.S. Sen. Bob Casey to improve the safety of crude oil shipments are included in the final version of the appropriations bill that will fund the federal government for the next nine months.

Casey began pushing for more money for rail safety after three train derailments in the state this year, including one in Vandergrift in February.

“This program was not included in the original House bill, so it needed a strong push from the Senate (and) Casey to make it in the final package,” said Casey’s spokesman John Rizzo.

The $54 billion in appropriations for transportation, housing and urban development includes funding for 15 new rail and hazardous material inspectors. It also calls for $3 million to expand the use of automated track inspections for 14,000 miles of track and $1 million to pay for online training for first responders on how to handle train derailments.

The Senate on Saturday approved the 2015 Omnibus Appropriations Bill that the House narrowly passed Thursday.

Casey’s bill requires the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration to finalize regulatory action to change tank car design standards by Jan. 15. The PHMSA began the changes in September 2013.

Among the new requirements is that newly manufactured and existing tank cars that are used to haul crude oil have puncture resistance systems and protection for hatches and valves that exceed the existing design requirements for the DOT-111 tankers, an old-style variety that critics say are too flimsy.

In the event that there is a trail derailment that involves a crude oil spill, new funding will ensure that first responders have better training on how to handle it.

The money in the bill for a web-based hazardous materials emergency response training curriculum will help ensure that communities that lack the resources to send their first responders to training sites can still access education to contain oil spills and prevent danger to people and communities.

“Funding will also be used to expedite implementation of a remote automated track inspection capability to increase inspection mileage at a reduced cost,” Rizzo said. “There is too much track for manual inspections to cover it all.”

U.S. Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., chairwoman of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, said she’s pleased the bill would mandate comprehensive oil spill response plans for railroads and provide funding focusing on providing safety training.

“I worked to set a deadline for the Department of Transportation to issue new safety standards for tank cars next month and worked to protect smaller communities without sufficient resources to respond to oil trains,” Murray said.

A federal investigation into the Feb. 13 derailment and oil spill in Vandergrift determined that “widening,” or spreading of the rails on that section track, was the probable cause.

The report said that speed did not cause the derailment. However, two railroad experts said it was a contributing factor because speed could have caused track problems on the curve.

Bakken Crude, California Regulation, Canadian regulation, Derailment, DOT-111, Federal Regulation (U.S.), State regulation

National Round-up: Calls to Ban Bomb Trains Ramp Up While Communities Await New Regulations

December 15, 2014 Roger Straw

Repost from DeSmogBlog

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.”

Meanwhile in Washington State, the draft of the 500-page 2014 Marine and Rail Oil Transportation Study was released. The report contains some staggering growth projections for oil-by-rail transportation in the state, as reported by The News Tribune.

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.

Facing this onslaught of oil-by-rail traffic for the state, Washington’s Governor Jay Inslee is proposing a new tax on oil transported through the state by rail.

In North Dakota, the birthplace of the modern oil-by-rail industry, meaningless new rail regulations will keep the bomb trains rolling. There is also a legal battle going on between the town of Enderlin and the rail operator Canadian Pacific. Canadian Pacific moves as many as 28 trains through Enderlin every day. Many stop and block roads and traffic in Enderlin causing traffic delays one would expect in Los Angeles but not in a town of 900 people in North Dakota.

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.

Federal Regulation (U.S.), Massive increase in crude-by-rail, Oil spill, Risk Assessment, Train length, Train weight

Oil trains are too long and too heavy

December 13, 2014 Roger Straw

Repost from The Oregonian
[Editor: A poignant opinion piece by an informed advocate. Jared Margolis is an attorney working for the Center for Biological Diversity’s Portland office on issues related to energy and endangered species. – RS]

Oil trains are too long and too heavy

By Jared Margolis, December 11, 2014

In this Sept. 16 file photo, rail cars containing oil sit on tracks south of Seattle. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)

Even to the most reasonable among us here in the Northwest, the lonely cry of the train whistle in the night is no longer a very comforting sound. You can’t help but wonder if it’s announcing the arrival of one of the 20 or so trains of up to 100 tanker cars that pass through the region in an average week, each one carrying up to 3 million gallons of explosive crude oil.

The exponential increase in risk posed by these trains has been highlighted by an unprecedented wave of accidents, including the explosive derailment in Quebec that incinerated part of a town and killed 47 people, and another in downtown Lynchburg, Va., that set the James River on fire, putting wildlife habitat and drinking water supplies at risk.

More crude oil was spilled by rail in 2013 — in excess of 1 million gallons — than between all the years from 1975 to 2012, according to an analysis of data from the federal Pipeline and Hazardous Material Safety Administration (PHMSA).

Between 2008 and 2013 there was nearly a tenfold increase in crude-by-rail spills, from eight to 119.

Yet, as the amount of volatile crude oil hurtling through Oregon towns, cities and sensitive waterfront landscapes continues to increase, proposals to reduce the danger have failed to focus on what federal regulators acknowledge to be among the most important factors making crude oil trains more likely to derail than most trains: the length and weight of each train.

Instead, proposals from federal regulators have been limited to giving the rail industry five years to stop hauling explosive crude oil in the most puncture-prone tanker cars, which PHMSA has stated will actually lead to longer, heavier trains. The length and weight of tanker trains hauling crude oil has been singled out by regulators as one of the leading causes of several disastrous derailments in recent years. Those increased risks are demonstrated by the simple fact that while the number of overall train derailments is dropping, the number of oil train derailments is escalating.

PHMSA’s own analysis has determined oil trains “are longer, heavier in total, more challenging to control … [and] can be more prone to derailments when put in emergency braking.” That’s why I co-authored a legal petition, filed with PHMSA last month, asking the agency to establish rules limiting trains carrying crude oil and other hazardous liquids to 4,000 tons — the weight that the American Association of Railroads has determined to be a “no problem” train, considered much less likely to derail. This safety guideline is currently exceeded threefold by the 100-car crude oil trains rumbling through Oregon.

And the risks posed by these long, over-heavy oil trains are only expected to grow: Analysts project the amount of oil being transported to California refineries by train to increase more than tenfold by 2016, much of it moving through Oregon.

It only makes sense to take aggressive, reasonable precautions to protect people and wildlife against this escalating, unacceptable danger.

• Jared Margolis is an attorney working for the Center for Biological Diversity’s Portland office on issues related to energy and endangered species.

Bakken Crude, Crude By Rail, DOT-111, Federal Regulation (U.S.), Rail inspection, Tank car retirement, Tank car retrofit, U.S. Department of Transportation

Federal budget bill sets January deadline on safety rules for oil tanker cars

December 12, 2014 Roger Straw

Repost from The Seattle Post Intelligencer (seattlepi.com)

Federal budget bill sets January deadline on safety rules for oil tanker cars

December 10, 2014 | By Joel Connelly

Tanker cars from a derailed CSX oil train burn after derailing in downtown Lynchburg, Virginia, last April. Increasing numbers of oil trains pass through Seattle and other Puget Sound cities en route to four refineries on northern Puget Sound. (AP Photo/City of Lynchburg, LuAnn Hunt)

Hidden away in Congress’ big spending bill, designed to fund the federal government through FY 2015, are stern marching orders to the U.S. Department of Transportation:

Deliver a final rule for new, safer oil tank car design standards by Jan. 15, 2015, and require that all rail carriers put in place comprehensive oil spill response plans.

The budget provisions, inserted by Sens. Patty Murray, D-Wash., and Susan Collins, R-Maine, are prompted by an oil train disaster in Quebec, and the rapid increase in trains carrying volatile Bakken crude oil from North Dakota to four refineries on northern Puget Sound.

“In Washington state, we’ve seen a startling increase in oil train traffic through communities of all sizes, from downtown Seattle to smaller, rural communities across the state,” said Murray, who has chaired the Senate Appropriations subcommittee on transportation.

“That’s why I worked to set a deadline for the Department of Transportation to issue new safety standards for tank cars next month and worked to fund a Shirt Line Railroad Safety Institute that will help protect smaller communities without sufficient resources to respond to oil trains.”

An old adage applies to the oil train issue: There’s nothing like a hanging in the morning to focus the mind.

In July of 2013, brakes failed and an unmanned runaway train sped into the small town of Lac-Megantic, Quebec, just over the border from Maine. It blew up, killing 47 people and leveling downtown.

The train was using 1960′s-designed DOT-111 tank cars. Another train, using DOT-111 cars, exploded into mushroom-cloud flames last December outside Casselton, N.D.. It forced evacuation of more than 2,000 people from the small town.

While promising new safety measures, the Department of Transportation has been criticized for giving railroads too much wiggle room.

The DOT said last summer it is setting a two-year deadline for getting DOT-111 tank cars off the rails. In reading the fine print, however, the clock would begin ticking in September of 2015 — giving rail carriers more than three years to stop use of the explosion-prone tank cars.

The federal budget bill would make available $10 million in grants to improve safety at railroad grade crossings that handle crude oil or other hazardous flammable liquids.

The DOT gets resources to hire 15 new hazardous-materials and rail-safety inspectors and $3 million to expand the use of automated track inspections to make sure rail tracks are maintained on crude oil transportation routes.

Refiners and shippers have responded.

Tesoro has stopped use of DOT-111 tank cars to supply its Anacortes refinery. The Burlington Northern-Santa Fe Railroad has announced a purchase of new, safer tank cars.

But the railroads have continued to resist making full, up-to-date information on oil shipments available to state and local emergency responders. They are fearful the information will be made public.

While Murray is touting its oil train provisions, the $1.1 trillion spending bill has drawn some fire from the political left.

Republicans have secured concessions, loosening Wall Street regulation and letting wealthy donors give more to political campaigns. The bill has slightly weakened school lunch nutrition standards championed by first lady Michelle Obama.

Liberal Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Wash., is voting against the bill.

“It is inconceivable that Congress would cut crucial regulations in the Dodd-Frank Act, when risky derivatives trading was at the center of the 2008 financial crisis,” said McDermott.

“Why is Congress giving Wall Street a massive Christmas present, when so many hard-working Americans are struggling to make ends meet?”