Tag Archives: Lac-Mégantic

Bakken Crude, Crude By Rail, Federal Regulation (U.S.), Hazmat notification, Rail routing, Tank car design

What it’s like to live 50 feet from the oil-train tracks

Repost from WAVY-TV, Portsmouth, VA
[Editor: An excellent news video report.  Apologies for the commercial ad.  – RS]

The risk rolling on Hampton Roads rails

By Chris Horne, November 24, 2014


NEWPORT NEWS, Va. (WAVY) – The mother of 21-month-old Lily Murphy is concerned about her daughter’s safety whenever she plays in their back yard. That’s because CSX trains pass about fifty feet from their back fence, as often as five times a week.

“Nothing like that ever even crossed my mind that it could be carrying hazardous, dangerous material so it’s good that you brought that to light,” said mother Christina Murphy.

The trains haul Bakken crude oil from North Dakota to Yorktown. It was a Bakken train derailment that caused a fatal inferno last year in Lac Megantic, Quebec, when nearly fifty people were killed in the explosion and fire. Another Bakken train derailed in Lynchburg last April and caused a major fire along the James River — that train was headed for Yorktown.

Photos: Train catches fire, derails in Lynchburg

Pat Calvert is a river keeper for the James River Association. His Lynchburg office is within a block of where the Lynchburg derailment occurred.

“Today, that same risk that existed on April 30, over six months later, is right here along the James River,” Calvert said. “That’s our concern: that we need to ensure that this doesn’t happen again.”

Experts say Bakken is more flammable than other types of crude oil.

“A lot of people think about the Beverly Hillbillies and the bubbling crude oil, it’s not that kind of crude oil,” said Gregory Britt, director of the Technological Hazards Division of the Virginia Department of Emergency Management. “It’s probably a lot closer to gasoline, as far as the flammability.”

CSX filed paperwork with the Commonwealth detailing the shipments. The railroad confirmed to 10 On Your Side it runs two to five Bakken oil trains a week across Virginia. Each train is about a hundred cars in length, with a total payload of about three million gallons of oil.

Document: Paperwork filed by CSX

The route includes Richmond and eventually passes through Williamsburg, Newport News and York County.

“It’s highly volatile, with a low flash point, and it’s going right through highly populated areas,” Calvert said. “People don’t realize this is happening every day.”

What makes the shipments even more dangerous is the design of many of the older tank cars that haul it. Federal regulators, railroads and rail car makers agree the older cars, known as legacy DOT 111s, need safety upgrades. This specific aspect of rail transportation is regulated by the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA). It’s up to PHMSA to create the rules for the modifications. PHMSA is part of the U.S. Department of Transportation.

Document: PHMSA’s proposed rule for flammable trains

“My industry likes the certainty of rule-making and has urged the Department of Transportation to move quickly on issuing a final rule,” said Tom Simpson, president of the Railway Supply Institute, the trade association that represents firms that make and service railroad tank cars.

CSX supports the safety modifications as well.

“The railroad industry supports to improve the tank car standards, to make sure that we’re moving the safest cars that we possibly can,” said CSX vice president Bryan Rhode, whose region includes Virginia.

PHMSA told WAVY News in an email that it is currently evaluating nearly 4,000 comments regarding safety upgrades for the older tank cars. A spokesman said the agency has a target date of March 31, 2015 to determine what upgrades are needed and make them mandatory.

Related link: Public comments regarding safety upgrades

Among several options, PHMSA is considering an extra jacket surrounding the cars to create a double wall, and protective guards on the top, ends and bottom. The measures would help prevent against ruptures and oil spillage.

The Quebec derailment involved about 1.3 million gallons of Bakken crude oil; the Lynchburg train leaked about 29,000 gallons.

“Lynchburg contributed to the larger discussion, nationally, about how we enhance safety for these types of trains,” Rhode said of CSX.

According to data from the US Department of Transportation, the amount of Bakken crude transported by rail has soared in recent years. In 2008, railroads hauled about 9,500 carloads. By 2013, the amount was 415,000 carloads, a 43-fold increase.

VDEM holds ongoing training for first responders to handle a potential incident involving Bakken crude.

“If there’s an event dealing with a spill, they should be able to dam it, dike it, they should be able to hold it in place for further assistance,” said Britt, who runs the training at key locations, including the York County safety services complex on Back Creek Road. “Then specialists can come in and environmental companies can clean it up.”

Christina Murphy hopes that training never has to be utilized, as she enjoys time in her yard with Lily in Newport News.

“I guess we should think about what we would do here, if something like that would happen, that’s pretty scary,” she said.

Bakken Crude, Crude By Rail, Derailment, Explosion, Funding for emergency response, North Dakota Industrial Commission, Oil conditioning, Oil stabilization

The difference between oil “conditioning” and oil “stabilization”

Repost from The Daily Yonder, Speak Your Piece
[Editor: Ok, I knew North Dakota regulators were working on regulations to get rid of volatile gases in the crude they ship by train, but I didn’t pay attention: I missed understanding the difference between oil “conditioning” and oil “stabilization.”  If Ron Schalow is right, North Dakota officials are far from fixing the problem of volatile crude oil “bomb trains.”  This is an important distinction – read on….  – RS]

North Dakota’s Other Oil Boom

North Dakota regulators could lessen the danger of crude-oil explosions that have killed bystanders and damaged property. Instead, the state’s Industrial Commission is likely to allow oil producers to continue shipping dangerous crude across North America when a commonly used fix is possible.
By Ron Schalow, 11/24/2014
A train carrying crude oil killed 47 people when it derained and exploded in Lac-Mégantic, Quebec, in July 2013. | Photo by Paul Chiasson/The Canadian Press

The safety of millions of Americans who live, work or play within a mile of tracks where Bakken oil trains run are in the hands of three mortal men.

Unfortunately, these men make up the North Dakota Industrial Commission.

“It’s a little like the Wild West up in the Bakken, where everybody gets to do what they want to do,” says Myron Goforth, president of Dew Point Control LLC, in Sugarland, Texas. “In the Eagle Ford (Texas shale play), you’ve got to play by the rules, which forces the oil companies to treat it (crude) differently.”

Not in North Dakota, where oil regulators are finally feeling pressure to require the Bakken oil producers to render the trains non-explosive. The push comes six years after the first massive Bakken oil train explosion outside of Luther, Oklahoma, and seven months since the last, in downtown Lynchburg, Virginia, where a quirk of physics turned the exploding tanker cars towards the river, sparing many people and buildings.

Making the trains safer has been possible all along. It seems that politicians in some states don’t want their citizens or towns incinerated, nor do they wish to watch property values drop in the meantime.

Will the North Dakota Industrial Commission act?

Spoiler alert: No.

The Bakken crude needs to be “stabilized,” to remove all explosive “natural gas liquids” such as ethane, propane and butane. That requires billions of dollars in additional equipment and infrastructure, and the oil companies don’t want to pay for it.

Stabilization is a standard practice in many other parts of the United States. And it’s a required part of preparing crude for shipment via pipelines. The explosion risk North Dakota’s lack of regulation imposes on railroad communities all over North America is completely unnecessary. And requiring stabilization would a further boost to the state’s economy. But that’s not enough for the commission.

Instead, the commission is going to sell a different process called “conditioning,” which the oil companies have been doing all along. And conditioning doesn’t do the job, unless you think that job should include towering fireballs, mushroom clouds, charred buildings and graves.

Railway Age explains the difference well:

This conditioning lowers the ignition temperature of crude oil—but not by much. It leaves in solution most of the culprit gases, including butane and propane. Even the industry itself says conditioning would not make Bakken crude meaningfully safer for transportation, though it would make the state’s crude more consistent from one well to another.

The only solution for safety is stabilization, which evaporates and re-liquefies nearly all of the petroleum gases for separate delivery to refiners. Stabilization is voluntarily and uniformly practiced in the Eagle Ford formation in Texas.

And, right on cue, on November 13 North Dakota Department of Mineral Resources Director Lynn Helms presented the North Dakota Industrial Commission with proposed new standards (there never were any old standards) to “condition” the Bakken crude, supposedly for the purpose of making the Bakken oil trains non-explosive. Or somewhat less explosive, kinda not explosive, or to get the height of the fireballs down into double digits… I don’t know.

A crude-oil train derailed and exploded in Lynchburg, Virginia, in the spring of 2014. Photo by Elyssa Ezmirly

But, if the goal is to render the Bakken oil trains NON-explosive, the proposal to “condition” the crude isn’t going to cut it.

I repeat, the producers have always “conditioned” the crude, but, evidently, now they’re going to be “forced” by the North Dakota Industrial Commission to turn the knob a few notches to the right, and everything will be peachy.

If it was that simple, perhaps they should have done that before dozens of people got killed – maybe sometime shortly after the first Bakken oil train derailed and blew sky high in 2008.

Commission Chair and North Dakota Governor Jack Dalrymple has so much faith in “conditioning” that his own emergency exercise of a Bakken oil train derailment and explosion estimated 60 casualties in Bismarck or Fargo, both medium-sized cities in North Dakota. One can only guess the number of deaths, if a Bakken train were to jump the rails in Minneapolis or Chicago.

Furthermore, taxpayers are footing the bill for billions to outfit, equip and train firefighters and emergency personnel to deal with a Bakken oil derailment and explosion. Quebec is on the hook for the $2.7 billion disaster in Lac-Megantic, a village of 6,000. That explosion required responses from “more than 1,000 firefighters from 80 different municipalities in Quebec and from six counties in the state of Maine,” according to a report by the Transportation Safety Board of Canada.

How much will it cost your community if tragedy strikes? Will North Dakota pay?

But, there is a bright side. When the next, or the next, or the next Bakken oil train disaster kills more people and decimates a section of Albany or Sacramento or Missoula or Perham, North Dakota can quit worrying about how to spend all of the money piling up in the Bank of North Dakota from oil production revenues. It will be gone to the survivors and a long list of stakeholders.

The loss will be due to willful negligence, disinterest or incompetence on the part of three men.

Ron Schalow lives in Fargo, North Dakota, and is part of the Coalition for Bakken Crude Oil Stabilization.

Bakken Crude, Hazmat notification, Phillips 66, San Luis Obispo County, Santa Maria Refinery, Tar sands crude, Valero Benicia Refinery, Yolano Climate Action Group

What does a Central Coast oil refinery have to do with Davis?

Repost from The Davis Enterprise

What does a Central Coast oil refinery have to do with Davis?

By Dave Ryan, November 23, 2014

In communities up and down the West Coast, groups of environmentalists, neighbors and local governments are doing whatever they can to mitigate or outright stop railroad terminals being built at coastal refineries at the end of rail lines that cut through cities and sensitive environmental areas.

Davis residents joined the fight earlier this year against the Valero oil refinery in Benicia, and now are adding their voices to a chorus opposing a Phillips 66 facility in San Luis Obispo County.

A local collection of environmental watchdogs called the Yolano Climate Action Group was one of the first to realize the potential public safety threat of Bakken crude oil trains traveling from out of state, through Roseville, Davis and to Benicia.

The group successfully petitioned the city of Davis Natural Resources Commission in January to oppose the Valero project. The commission then was successful in persuading the City Council a few months later to begin monitoring the project and round up support from government agencies like Yolo County and the Sacramento Area Council of Governments to lobby Benicia for a more complete environmental impact report.

“It was Davis that alerted the entire region,” said Lynne Nittler, a coordinator for the Yolano Climate Action Group.

Meanwhile, Davis’ state and federal representatives have been doing what they can, within the limits of strong federal pre-emption laws for railroads.

Trains carrying the hazardous materials have derailed and exploded in recent years, most notably in Lac-Mégantic, Quebec, where a July 6, 2013, derailment caused a fire and wiped out a portion of the town, killing 47 people and forcing 2,000 others to flee. A subsequent derailment and explosion just outside Casselton, N.D., in January also alarmed the public.

If the Valero refinery railroad terminal is built at Benicia, Davis would see trains estimated to be 100 cars long filled with volatile Bakken shale crude oil traveling straight through downtown along the same route the Amtrak Capital Corridor uses to carry commuters.

Phillips 66 terminal

But Davis faces another possible threat, as well.

Far to the south and west of Davis are the Central California coast communities of San Luis Obispo County, housing the Phillips 66 oil refinery near the Nipomo Mesa and — potentially — another rail terminal.

That terminal would attract more trains filled with Canadian tar sands crude oil, traveling through Roseville, Davis, Oakland, San Jose and Salinas to Phillips 66. While somewhat less volatile than Bakken shale crude, tar sands crude is mixed with chemical thinners that make it potentially explosive.

Laurence Shinderman leads an activist group in Nipomo opposing the Phillips 66 railroad terminal called the Mesa Refinery Watch Group. The group’s ranks swelled from a handful in recent months to 250 residents spearheading a letter-writing campaign targeting the San Luis Obispo County Board of Supervisors.

The county is leading the environmental review process for the railroad terminal. Yolano Climate Action Group, the city of Davis and SACOG have submitted their concerns, as well.

Shinderman said Nittler has been helping from the start, giving advice to the Mesa Refinery Watch Group.

The mission among the Davis group is to get people to go from NIMBY to NOPE, or from saying, “Not In My Back Yard” to “Not On Planet Earth,” Nittler said.

It represents a shift in thinking from opposing a particular project to a wider understanding of what environmentalists consider a dangerous trend of oil by rail along the West Coast.

In San Luis Obispo County, the rail line that would carry the oil runs through the Cal Poly SLO campus and over a bridge adjacent to a county drinking water treatment facility.

“The reality is there is human error, there are guys who are going to fall asleep at the switch,” Shinderman said. “You can’t mitigate for human error. The railroad is hiding behind the skirt of federal pre-emption and saying, “Ah, you can’t do anything.’ ”

Federal protection

Under federal code, any laws governing railroads must be uniform across the country, “to the extent practicable.”

That forbids the vast majority of local tinkering, but a small “savings clause” says a state may regulate some railroad activity provided the situation is geared at a local, but not statewide, safety hazard; is not in conflict with federal law; and does not “unreasonably” restrict railroad commerce.

The party claiming federal pre-emption has the burden of proof in any case.

In the matter of the railroad terminals, local cities and counties are ostensibly in charge of the approval — or disapproval — of the projects.

Even there, federal law may give the oil companies and the railroads a recourse in court if the terminals aren’t built.

According to the Association of  American Railroads, rail safety is a top priority. In accordance with a 2014 emergency order from the federal Department of Transportation, rail companies are required to notify state emergency response agencies about the routes of trains carrying large amounts of Bakken crude.

The association also notes that railroads train thousands of first responders, including using a $5 million specialized crude-by-rail training and a tuition assistance program, which is estimated to serve 1,500 first responders in 2014.

“If an incident occurs, railroads swiftly implement well-practiced emergency response plans and work closely with first responders to help minimize injuries or damage,” reads a position statement on the association’s website.

The association said the industry is also advocating for safer rail cars that are less prone to disaster. The association claims that in 2013, freight railroads “stepped up the call for even more rigorous standards for tank cars carrying flammable liquids” that included asking that existing tank cars be retrofitted to meet higher standards or be “phased out.”

Nittler said that was a smokescreen, and the federal government does not impose rules the industry doesn’t agree to first.

Even according to AAR, the federal Railroad Safety Advisory Committee that develops safety standards for rail transport uses a “consensus process” to impose new safety standards.

Legislative help

Davis’ Democratic congressman, Rep. John Garamendi, is a member of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure. He said the committee is in the process of crafting new rules for railroads.

“I have and will continue to push them to write the strongest possible guidelines,” Garamendi said in an email.

At the state Capitol, state Sen. Lois Wolk, D-Davis, is part of efforts to pass laws that levy taxes on railroads to provide money for first responders.

“The volume of crude oil being imported into California has increased 100-fold in recent years, and Valero has plans to ship 100 train cars of crude oil per day through the heart of my district to its refinery in Benicia,” Wolk wrote in an email.

“… Currently, local governments along these transport corridors don’t have sufficient funding to protect their communities. When the Legislature reconvenes in January, I will push for funding for developing and maintaining adequate state and local emergency response to accidents and spills involving rail transports of crude oil and other hazardous materials.”

Union Pacific and Burlington Northern Santa Fe railroads filed suit against the state in October, claiming that California or any other state does not have the authority to impose safety requirements on them because federal law already does that.

That may put a damper on a new North Dakota law passed Thursday that requires companies to stabilize the volatility of Bakken crude before shipping it out of the state. Texas already requires such handling.

In the meantime, Nittler is busy trying to drum up support for a letter-writing campaign to the SLO Board of Supervisors before a 4:30 p.m. deadline Monday for comments on its draft environmental review.

“If they don’t build it, they won’t come,” Shinderman said.

Bakken Crude, Bay Area, Benicia CA, Blast zone, Cleanup funding, Crude By Rail, Emergency Readiness & Response, Explosion, Federal Regulation (U.S.), Fire, Massive increase in crude-by-rail, Oil spill, Schools, Tank car design, Train crew size, Valero Benicia Refinery

KPIX: State Senator Says Bay Area Not Prepared For Crude Oil Trains

Repost from 5KPIX TV CBS SF Bay Area
[Editor: apologies for the video’s commercial ad.  You can pass on choosing an ad – the video will begin if you just wait.  – RS]

State Senator Says Bay Area Not Prepared For Crude Oil Trains

Phil Matier talks with state senator Jerry Hill who believes that Bay Area emergency crews are not properly prepared to handle the hundreds of tanker trains bringing shale crude oil from the Dakotas to local refineries. (11/23/14)