More Fiery Oil Train, Pipeline Accidents Unless Government Acts: Report
September 22, 2014
If the U.S. doesn’t quickly address the safe transportation of oil and gas, Americans could pay the price with more fiery train and pipeline accidents, according to a report released Monday by the Government Accountability Office.
“Without timely action to address safety risks posed by increased transport of oil and gas by pipeline and rail, additional accidents that could have been prevented or mitigated may endanger the public and call into question the readiness of transportation networks in the new oil and gas environment,” found the report.
The GAO report focused on the safety of moving crude oil by train and the growing network of “gathering lines,” largely unregulated natural gas pipelines. Both have been subjects of recent investigations by NBC News. The GAO determined that the Department of Transportation had “not kept pace with the changing oil and gas transportation environment.”
Oil and gas production in the U.S. increased more than fivefold between 2007 and 2012, a boom brought on by technological advances in drilling and hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking.” Vast volumes of oil and gas production soon outstripped the pipeline infrastructure in place to move them.
Crude producers began to load their oil on trains. More than 400,000 carloads of crude ran over North American rails in 2013, up from just 9,500 in 2008. But a series of explosive wrecks have raised concern about the safety of oil trains — the worst, a 2013 derailment outside a small Quebec town, killed nearly 50 people.
A 2013 NBC News investigation found regulators had long known that the tank cars used to ship oil were vulnerable to rupture in an accident.
The DOT has since issued proposed rules to improve the train cars that carry oil. In its report, the GAO applauded the move, but emphasized safety improvements must go beyond the cars, including testing the makeup of the oil, which the DOT has said is particularly flammable.
The GAO also warned better oversight was needed over the growing network of “gathering pipelines” that move natural gas from the well. In August, an investigation by NBC News found that 250,000 miles of these lines are in rural areas and subject to little or no federal or state safety oversight, despite sometimes running beside homes.
Valero’s Promise to Benicia: We’ll only have an environmental disaster once every 111 years.
Actually, that’s kind of worrisome, especially considering that if you don’t experience that disaster yourself, your kids probably will. This is one of the many absurd elements showing Valero’s cavalier attitude toward public safety in the draft Environmental Impact Report (EIR) for its proposed crude by rail project, for which public comments were due this week. The hazard analysis in this report is also a serious underestimate, according to the State among many others: The California Public Utilities Commission notes the serious failure of Valero to address the “potential for tragic consequences of crude oil tank car ruptures” from its proposed Crude by Rail Project.
Valero’s Promise to Benicia: We’ll only have an environmental disaster once every 111 years
This dangerous crude project is so riddled with problems that many communities up-rail are now voicing serious concern. The City of Sacramento highlights the high concentration of people around the rail freight lines (“more than 147,000 City residents live within ½ mile”) serving the “Valero Benicia refinery [which] is one of two California refineries that are in the process of securing permits to build rail terminals to import Canadian tar sands and Bakken crude oils.” (emphasis added) And the City of Davis suggests that the “highest levels of protection [be implemented] before disasters such as hazardous material releases and explosions occur [so that] we can avoid having such disasters in the first place.”
Benicians for a Safe and Healthy Community explain why the project is fatally flawed with 132 pages of concerns. Valero’s crude by rail proposal is like so many other projects popping up all over the nation in a mad rush to access cheaper, extreme and dangerous crude oils, with little regard for public health or safety. This project is a total disaster (based on NRDC, CBE and other comments) because it brings:
More Refinery Pollution: Bringing in extreme crudes like tar sands and fracked Bakken crude will only increase refinery pollution. Valero’s Benicia refinery already releases 70 percent more toxic chemicals than the average for California.
Toxic Plumes Along Rail Lines: This thing called “crude shrinkage” happens during transport, where entrained gases escape, leading to a 0.5 to 3 percent loss of crude oil. It’s a big problem for volatile crude oils like Bakken, and coupled with the high benzene levels found in some North American crudes (up to 7%), it creates a serious toxic plume around rail lines. For instance, we estimate over 100 pounds per day of excess benzene emissions from the Valero proposal in the Bay Area (or 1800 times more than the draft EIR reports).
Extreme Crudes are Dangerous: Valero and other oil companies pretend that they can mix extreme crudes like tar sands and fracked Bakken into the ideal “Alaskan North Slope look-alike” crude, which sounds great, except that it doesn’t work that way in reality. Both Bakken and tar sands carry their dangerous properties into any crude oil blend making it more volatile, toxic, and corrosive.
CBR Terminals at Refineries Amplify the Hazard: Valero proposes to site its crude by rail unloading facility within 150 feet of a number of very large refinery tanks that store highly flammable and potentially explosive material. If a derailment occurred at the terminal, it could set off a chain reaction of fire and explosions at the refinery. And there have been three derailments in Benicia outside the Valero refinery in the past year; luckily those trains were carrying petroleum coke, not crude oil.
Risk of Catastrophic Accidents All Along the Rail Route: Valero’s “Barkan report” that estimates a release only every 111 years from the proposed 100 daily tank cars carrying crude is absurd for many reasons. Most egregious is that it fails to consider recent data, like the six major crude oil train accidents over the past year that have resulted in massive fireballs and destruction, including 47 casualties in Lac Mégantic. The safety risks to tens of thousands of people living around these freight rail lines remains grave.
The oil industry has been promoting “look-alike” crudes that attempt to mimic conventional crude by blending extreme bottom of the barrel crudes. The mile-long trains laden with these extreme crudes are a Trojan horse that puts millions of Californians at risk and threatens to undo several decades of environmental progress. We need a moratorium on all new crude by rail projects, including Valero-Benicia, until the state can assess the cumulative impacts of these projects, make sure environmental impacts are fully mitigated and assure communities that they will be safe.
Dangerous Oil-by-Rail Is Here, but Railroad Bridge Inspectors Are Not
By Ken Broder, September 18, 2014
The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) estimates there are about 5,000 railroad bridges in California, but doesn’t really know for sure. They are privately owned and inspected and were off the public radar until oil companies started shipping dangerous crude by rail to California refineries in increasingly large quantities.
Governments are not ready to have volatile loads of cargo rolling through sensitive habitats across the state, much less through heavily-populated metropolitan areas. But help is on the way. In March, the CPUC requested funding (pdf) for seven inspectors to specifically handle oil-by-rail, and two of them would focus on bridges.
The Contra Costa Times reported last week that the two inspectors have not yet been hired, but when they are, they will be the only two inspectors checking out the bridges. They will be assisted in their task by the sole federal inspector assigned to the area―an area that includes 11 states.
One of their first jobs will be to find the bridges. There is no comprehensive list. Judging by some industry comments, there may be some reluctance on the part of rail owners to provide all the information the government might ask. Bridge consultant and former American Society of Civil Engineers President Andy Hermann told the Times that the companies kept bridge data secret for competitive reasons.
But not to worry. The owners already do a good job of maintaining the bridges because, in Hermann’s words, “There’s a very strong profit motive to keep the bridges open. Detours will cost them a fortune.” In other words, this would be a situation where a company does not make a risky decision based on short-term, bottom-line considerations that could adversely affect the well-being of people and the environment.
In a report (pdf) to lawmakers on rail safety last December, the CPUC called California’s rail bridges “a potential significant safety risk.” It said most of them “are old steel and timber structures, some over a hundred years old.” Big rail companies tout their safety programs but the report points out often these bridges are owned by small short line railroads “that may not be willing or able to acquire the amount of capital needed to repair or replace degrading bridges.”
That’s bad, but not AS bad when the rail shipments aren’t volatile oil fracked from North Dakota’s Bakken formation, loaded on old rail cars ill-equipped to handle their modern cargo. Federal regulations to upgrade the unsafe cars will probably take at least a few years to complete.
When safety advocates talk about the dangers of crude-by-rail, they invariably cite the derailment last July in Quebec that killed 47 people, burned down 50 buildings and unleashed a “river of burning oil” through sewers and basements. But the Times reached back to 1991 for arguably California’s worst train derailment, albeit sans crude oil.
A train in Dunsmuir, Siskiyou County, fell off a bridge and dumped 19,000 gallons of a concentrated herbicide into the Sacramento River. Fish and vegetation died 45 miles away. Some invertebrate species went extinct. Hundreds of people required medical treatment from exposure to the contamination.
Railroads are carrying 25 times more crude oil nationally than they were five years ago. Most oil in California is moved via pipeline or ship. In 2012, only 0.2% of the 598 million barrels of oil arrived by rail in California. But the California Energy Commission (CEC) has said it expects rail to account for a quarter of imports by 2016.
Earthjustice, an environmental advocacy group, does not want safety measures to amble down the track years after the crude roars through. Its lawyers joined with the Sierra Club and ForestEthics to file a lawsuit in federal court last week to force a U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) response to a July legal petition seeking a ban on the type of rail cars that derailed and exploded in Quebec.
A week ago, a San Francisco County Superior Court judge told Earthjustice and other environmental groups they couldn’t sue to halt deliveries of crude oil to a rail terminal in Richmond because the deliveries had been legally permitted by the state―without public notification―and the 180-day deadline to appeal had quietly passed.
Repost from The Columbian [Editor: An important local study, calling for better disaster preparedness. Significant quote – “…oil trains travel through three significant zones in Seattle: passing within blocks of two stadiums, through the downtown tunnel, and along the north end, which has limited access because of high banks along the waterfront.” – RS]
Oil trains called hazard in old Seattle tunnel
Report says railroad, city must prepare to limit a catastrophe
By PHUONG LE, Associated Press, September 16, 2014
A long line of rail tanker cars sits on tracks south of Seattle, Tuesday, Sept. 16, 2014. In a report to the Seattle City Council, city emergency planners say more must be done to lower the risk of a possible oil train accident and improve the city’s ability to respond. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren) (Ted S. Warren/AP)
SEATTLE — With increasing numbers of trains carrying volatile crude oil through Seattle’s “antiquated” downtown rail tunnel, city emergency planners say more must be done to lower the risk of an oil train accident and improve the city’s ability to respond.
In a report to the Seattle City Council, emergency managers warned that an oil train accident resulting in fire, explosion or spill “would be a catastrophe for our community in terms of risk to life, property and environment.”
BNSF Railway can make immediate safety improvements in the mile-long 100-year-old rail tunnel that runs under downtown Seattle, including installing radio communication, a fire suppression system to release water and foam, and a permanent ventilation system, according to the report written by Barb Graff, who directs the city’s office of emergency management, and Seattle assistant fire chief A.D. Vickery.
About one or two mile-long trains a day carrying shipments of crude oil from the Bakken region of North Dakota, Montana and Canada through the city of about 630,000 residents.
Several refineries in the state are receiving shipments of crude oil, and the others are upgrading facilities to accept oil trains. Once refineries are able to accommodate additional shipments, three or more trains could pass through Seattle each day, the city report said.
Oil trains currently enter Washington state near Spokane, and travel through the Tri-Cities and along the Columbia River before traversing Seattle to refineries to the north. In the state, as many as 17 trains carry about 1 million gallons of crude oil a week through several counties, including Spokane, Benton and Clark, BNSF reported to the state in July.
“We know they can explode. We’ve seen the tragedy in Canada. We know they can derail. That happened two months ago in our own city,” said Councilor Mike O’Brien, whose committee scheduled a special meeting Tuesday night to discuss the report. “We have to treat this as a real threat.”
Oil-train derailments have caused explosions in North Dakota, Virginia, Alabama and Oklahoma, as well as in Quebec, where 47 people were killed when a runaway train exploded in Lac-Megantic in July 2013.
Two months ago in Seattle, three tanker cars derailed as an oil train bound for a refinery in Anacortes pulled out of a rail yard in Seattle. BNSF officials noted at the time that nothing spilled, and a hazardous materials crew was on the scene in 5 minutes, but the incident raised new concerns.
BNSF spokesman Gus Melonas said the railway has improved tracks and roadbed to ensure that trains travel the tunnel safely. He said the concrete-lined tunnel is inspected regularly and is “structurally safe.”
“We’ll review the (city) report further,” he said. “We take safety extremely seriously and the operation of trains is a top priority, and we’ll continue to enhance our safety process.”
The railway plans to locate a safety trailer with foam equipment and extinguishers in the Seattle area, and plans to continue to train Seattle firefighters and responders.
Seattle’s report notes that oil trains travel through three significant zones in Seattle: passing within blocks of two stadiums, through the downtown tunnel, and along the north end, which has limited access because of high banks along the waterfront.
“The tunnel runs under all of downtown. What happens if something goes wrong there?” O’Brien said. “We’ve heard the fire department say we aren’t sure we can send firefighters to fight if it’s too dangerous.”
Oil trains typically move at about 10 mph through the tunnel, less than the maximum speed of 20 mph, and do not operate in the tunnel at the same time as a passenger train, BNSF’s Melonas said.
A derailment and fire involving Bakken oil tank cars could stress fire department resources, the report said. It recommends limiting track speeds in high-density urban areas, and that the railroad company help pay for specialized training, sponsor annual drills to respond to tank car emergencies and provide a foam response vehicle to use in case of an oil train accident.
Eric de Place, policy director for Sightline Institute, an environmental think tank, said other local governments should be doing similar reviews.
“Railroads don’t carry near the rail insurance they need,” he said. “If there’s a meaningful risk, the railroads should have to be insured against it and they should have to find private insurance.”
