Tag Archives: Karl Alexy

Bakken Crude, Crude By Rail, Derailment, Explosion, Federal Regulation (U.S.), Let it burn, Tank car design, Tank car retrofit

Rail Industry Requests Massive Loophole in Oil-by-Rail Safety To Extend Bomb Trains Well Beyond 2025

Repost from DeSmogBlog

Rail Industry Requests Massive Loophole in Oil-by-Rail Safety To Extend Bomb Trains Well Beyond 2025

By Justin Mikulka, July 21, 2016 – 13:00

In the most recent oil-by-rail accident in Mosier, Oregon the Federal Rail Administration (FRA) concluded that the tank cars involved — the jacketed CPC-1232 type — “performed as expected.” So an oil train derailing at the relatively slow speed of 25 mph should be “expected” to have breached cars resulting in fiery explosions.

Current regulations allow those tank cars to continue rolling on the track carrying volatile Bakken crude oil and ethanol until 2025 with no modifications.

Yet industry lobbying group the Railway Supply Institute (RSI) has now requested the Federal Railroad Administration to essentially allow these jacketed CPC-1232 tank cars to remain on the tracks for decades beyond 2025.

This was just one of the troubling facts that came to light at the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) roundtable on tank car safety on July 13th, and perhaps the one of greatest concern to anyone living in an oil train blast zone like Mosier, Oregon.

Just Re-Stencil It and Call It a DOT 117

One of the biggest risks with Bakken oil train accidents is that often the only way to deal with the fires is to let them burn themselves out. This can result in full tank cars becoming engulfed in flames for hours or days in what is known as a pool fire. This can lead to a “thermal tear” in the tank and the signature mushroom cloud of fire so often seen with these derailments.

The new regulations address this issue by requiring tank cars to have a layer of ceramic insulation covering the entire tank car to prevent the oil from heating up to the point of creating a thermal tear (ceramic shown in pink in the image below.)


Image credit: NTSB

However, the RSI has requested the FRA to allow the existing jacketed CPC-1232 cars, like the ones in the Mosier accident, to not require the ceramic thermal protection.

The industry’s argument is that the current fiberglass insulation on the CPC-1232 is sufficient protection. However, the fact that the fiberglass insulation was not designed to protect the contents of a tank car from fire does not seem to bother the RSI.

At the same time the RSI is arguing against thermal protection for CPC-1232s, the RSI has helpful videos on its website explaining the new safety features for DOT-117 tank cars — including “thermal protection.”

The NTSB’s Robert Sumwalt summed up what this request would mean in one simple statement at the July 13 round table event saying, “the same type of cars as in Mosier can be re-stenciled as DOT-117R with nothing more than a new bottom outlet valve.” [R stands for retrofit.]

So, they are essentially asking to paint over the CPC-1232 label on the tank cars with a DOT-117 while doing nothing more than changing the bottom outlet valve. Which means we should expect many more accidents like Mosier in the future since most of these CPC-1232 cars are only a few years old and they have an expected working life of 30-40 years.

As Robert Sumwalt said in his opening statement explaining why we should expect many more fiery oil train derailments with the existing tank car fleet, “just do the math.”

Industry Arguments Laughable If Not For the Consequences

Would you believe that one of the arguments made at the roundtable in favor of not requiring thermal protection on these cars was that the oil itself acts as a heat sink? Which is true. Until the point where the oil absorbs so much heat from the fire that the tank car explodes.

However, the reason this argument is given credibility is that the regulations only require a tank car to endure sitting in a pool fire for 100 minutes without exploding. Forget the fact that many of the Bakken oil train accidents have involved fires that burned for days.

This 100-minute limit was the same reasoning used to justify the fiberglass insulation on the current jacketed CPC-1232 as offering sufficient protection, as per the industry request. Which led to the following exchange between the NTSB’s Sumwalt and RSI representative John Byrne.

Byrne: “In our own modeling the fiberglass insulation system met the federal requirement for thermal protection.”

Sumwalt: “But in reality in the fiberglass situation, doesn’t the fiberglass all just melt… doesn’t it also melt and all end up pooling down in the bottom in the void between the blanket and the shell?”

Byrne: “Basically yes…but at the same time, that whole system acts as a thermal protection system in that it meets the requirement based on the federal law.”

Sumwalt: “Ok, thanks. So it meets the requirements.”

So, along with the oil itself being offered as adequate thermal protection, we also get fiberglass that melts in a fire being offered as protection for anyone in the blast zone.

So what did the regulators have to say about this absurd argument?

FRA’s Karl Alexy made it clear that “industry” concerns were receiving serious consideration saying, “we’re not taking it lightly, we understand what it means to industry… be certain that we are taking this very seriously.”

Well, we do understand what it means to the industry. Adding ceramic thermal protection would cut into profits. And one thing that was made clear repeatedly during the day’s discussion was that this was all about the money and that safety was only for people worried about “risk.”

As usual when there is a discussion about oil train safety, the oil industry lobbying group the American Petroleum Institute had a seat at the table. API representative Susan Lemieux cut to the heart of the issue with some actual honesty.

“In the industry we don’t see transportation as a risk, it is just a function of business.”

Why try to improve the situation when you don’t see any risk?

The FRA and the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration have informed DeSmog that they will issue a formal response to the industry’s request to allow the fiberglass to qualify as thermal protection in the near future.

The Ground Rules – Profits Over Safety

In the above slide shown of the DOT-117, there is one other important thing to note. The shells on those tank cars are 9/16th of an inch thick. The shells of the jacketed CPC-1232 are 7/16th of an inch thick. This difference has safety implications as the thinner shells rupture more easily.  The RSI points out this fact in a video on its website about the advantages of the thicker shells on the DOT-117 which they say are “less prone to puncture.”

But the more important difference, as we have pointed out repeatedly at DeSmog, is that safer car designs are heavier, which means they can transport less oil per car. That lower capacity again cuts into profits. This point was made by ExxonMobil in a slide they presented to regulators arguing against thicker tank shells.

While Exxon was not at the roundtable, plenty of oil and rail industry representatives were, and they made this point very clear.

Gabe Claypool, President of oil train operators Dakota Plains, explained why it made economic sense to use CPC-1232s over DOT-117s.

“A lot of it’s economics as well…we were just having a conversation around the sizing of the car, the 1232 car type is very much in abundance and it is also a larger car. In the current category of still trying to be profitable, if I can get that extra volume in a larger car that is still regulatorally [sic] compliant, they’re [sic] gonna stick with that.”

Richard Kloster of rail consulting firm Alltranstek was one of the more vocal participants during the roundtable and he repeatedly made points about the economics of retrofitting the CPC-1232 over buying the new DOT-117 saying, “The retrofit is always going to win economically.”

Kloster also made it clear where the industry put its priorities when it came to safety versus profit saying, “There has got to be a balance between safety and the economic viability of moving these products by rail” and that there were a “lot of cases, you know, where economics wins all the time but risk trumps economics in some cases.”

Economics wins all the time.

There was one representative from labor at the roundtable who did not offer a comment until the final closing segment, but he also shared the reality of what was driving the decisionmaking when he discussed the need for safety but stated, “I know it’s about money.”

ExxonMobil Wins Again

So, in the end, ExxonMobil and the oil industry have won again. Watching this roundtable and the many congressional hearings and previous NTSB events in the past few years and seeing the lack of progress on real safety improvements, it almost seems like this all was orchestrated from the start.

In the years leading up to the latest tank car rulemaking, the industry essentially ordered a whole new fleet of CPC-1232 cars which they are currently using. The CPC-1232 cars have the thinner tank shells which makes them more prone to puncture and also more profitable. And they are ok to use, unchanged, until 2025. If the industry request is approved, those cars will just need new bottom outlet valves after 2025.

Regardless, they will always have the thinner tank shells, like Exxon wanted.

At the end of the July 13 event, Robert Sumwalt made an interesting statement. He said, “some of us met yesterday to go over the ground rules.”

The meeting where they went over the ground rules was not open to the public or media. If one were to hazard a guess as to what the first and foremost ground rule set was, it would be a safe bet to posit it was that “economics wins all the time.”

Blog Image Credit: Dawn Faught via NTSB

 

CPC-1232, Crude By Rail, Derailment, DOT-111, Emergency Readiness & Response, Explosion, Federal Regulation (U.S.), Fire, Hazmat notification, High Hazard Flammable Trains (HHFTs), Positive Train Control, Rail routing, Tank car retirement, Tank car retrofit, Train speed, Volatility

Expert comments on new DOT rules – Dr. Fred Millar

Repost of an email from Fred Millar
[Editor:  Dr. Fred Millar is a policy analyst, researcher, educator, and consultant with more than three decades of experience assessing the risks associated with transporting hazardous materials.  More about Fred here on p. 3 of his Comment on Valero Benicia’s crude by rail proposal.  – RS]

NEW REGULATIONS: DOT Canada joint announcement  – Comments and notes

By Fred Millar, May 1 2015

Full Final Rule: http://www.dot.gov/sites/dot.gov/files/docs/final-rule-flammable-liquids-by-rail_0.pdf

1.      The US/Canada announcement of harmonized new safety regulations for trying to prevent Crude by Rail disasters falls far short of what is needed and yields another clear indicator of how industry lobbying weakens efforts for any significant and effective government regulation.

Senator Cantwell [D-WA] has bluntly stated: “This new DOT rule is just like saying let the oil trains roll. It does nothing to address explosive volatility, very little to reduce the threat of rail car punctures, and is too slow on the removal of the most dangerous cars. It’s more of a status quo rule than the real safety changes needed to protect the public and first responders.”

2.      Safety-minded DOT staffers have often in public forums and in regulatory documents pointedly highlighted important safety issues with High Hazard Flammable Trains [HHFT].   But DOT Secretary Foxx’s ongoing rollouts of painfully limited regulatory proposals keep coming even after the staff’s own public statements [e.g., by Karl Alexy] and their regulatory documents. For example, the July 2014 Draft Regulatory Impact Analysis clearly predicts an alarming level of expected ongoing derailment disasters, but this is apparently a level which industry considers an acceptable cost of doing business when the current basic industry practices are not significantly altered.

The most clearly disappointing aspects of the new Final Rule involve:

  • Train speed: these high allowed speed limits [which the railroads have already adopted voluntarily] would ensure ongoing derailment punctures of even the newer tank cars.
  • Routing: simply extending the existing ineffective and secret rail urban routing regime to HHFTs means railroads are free to keep our cities and sensitive environmental areas at high risk, and keeping the public in the dark about those risks.
  • Retrofit schedules extending in some cases ten years, to 2023.
  • Volatility – not addressed at all.

********************************************

Intense negotiations have occurred behind the scenes regarding what safety measures  industry and governments can agree are feasible and economically practical, e.g., regarding how short regulators can make a mandated deadline for costly safety retrofits of the approximately 100,000 existing inadequate tank cars in the mile-long High Hazard Flammable Trains.

3.   A previous rail car safety crisis illuminates the political nature of the regulatory decisions as to what safety measures will be considered feasible.   In the 1970s, US DOT at first ordered the manifestly unsafe pressurized tank cars [more robust than the DOT-111s ], carrying cargoes such as chlorine, ammonia and propane, to be retrofit with various upgrades within two to four years. When the tank cars kept exploding, however, with one 1977 blast in Waverly TN killing 16 ill-trained firefighters, DOT hastily shortened the mandated retrofits deadlines to one to two years.

4.   These long-overdue HHFT regulations that US DOT rolls out [nearly 2 full years after the Lac-Megantic Quebec tragedy with 47 dead] are designed to look vigorous, but will not deliver significant improvements in any of the most-needed safety measures to prevent ongoing disasters:

    • Volatility reduction – Obama already punted on this to 3 ND regulators, awash in oil money
    • Emergency response capabilities
    • Tank car design
    • Train Speed
    • Risk-reduction routing
    • Risk Information to the public – as NTSB has pointed out should be a key element in undergirding serious safety measures and emergency response planning

5.   The context here is notable: ongoing fireball disasters with Crude Oil Trains in Canada and the US, with the newest design of tank cars, the CPC-1232s, releasing their contents in several.

Even an eminently railroad-friendly commentator in the rail industry’s own Trains Magazine – Fred Frailey – is frustrated by railroads’ failure to decisively to prevent the spate of CBR disasters… He says the North American public is rightly alarmed by the massive crude oil trains as they see that “Railroads aren’t good at keeping them on the tracks.” [May 2015 issue]

Similar railcar disaster crises in the past alarmed the public and prompted Congress and regulators to beef up safety:

An excerpt:

Many tank cars that were built starting in the 1960s were designed to carry as much cargo as possible, which meant thin shells that could easily puncture or rupture in a derailment. While economical, the designs proved disastrous in a number of horrific incidents involving toxic and flammable gases.

The deaths of numerous railroad workers and emergency responders in the 1970s spurred regulators and the industry to improve the safety of the pressurized tank cars used to transport “all kinds of exotic materials that cause battlefield-like damage,” NTSB official Edward Slattery told The Associated Press in 1978.

Six weeks after 16 people were killed in Waverly, Tenn., including the town’s police and fire chiefs, when a tank car filled with propane exploded following a train derailment, the NTSB convened an emergency hearing in Washington. Nearly 50 witnesses testified, including mayors, emergency responders, railroad executives, private citizens and a young state attorney general from Arkansas named Bill Clinton.

“Every month in which unprotected tank cars ride the rails increases the chances of another catastrophic hazardous-materials accident,” said James King, then the NTSB’s chairman, in opening the hearing on April 4, 1978.

By the early 1980s, pressurized cars were equipped with puncture-resistant shields, fire-resistant thermal insulation and devices to help the cars stay coupled in derailments, reducing the risk that they could strike and puncture each other.

An industry study found that the retrofits made a big difference within six years. Punctures of the car’s heads – the round shields at each end of the car – fell by 94 percent. Punctures in the car’s shell – its cylindrical body – fell 67 percent. Ruptures due to fire exposure fell by 93 percent.

Additional changes in railroad operating practices, track maintenance and training for emergency response personnel reduced the frequency and severity of accidents.

The non-pressurized DOT-111A, however, was left mostly unaltered. Upgrades probably weren’t necessary when the cars were carrying benign products such as corn syrup or vegetable oils, but regulators also allowed the cars to transport flammable and corrosive materials.

In accident after accident over the next three decades, the NTSB repeatedly referred to the cars’ shortcomings.

“The inadequacy of the protection provided by DOT-111A tank cars for certain dangerous products has been evident for many years,” the NTSB wrote the Federal Railroad Administration in a letter dated July 1, 1991.

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2014/01/27/215650/railroad-tank-car-safety-woes.html#storylink=cpy