Tag Archives: Lynchburg Virginia

Bakken Crude, CPC-1232 standard, DOT-111, Federal Regulation (U.S.), Tank car design, U.S. Department of Transportation

NY Times: excellent report, new information on rail car phaseout, redesign

May 9, 2014 Roger Straw

Repost from The New York Times
[Editor: Significant quote: “But safety advocates, as well as railroad officials, point out that these newer cars — known as CPC-1232s — have also failed in recent crashes….Ten of the 13 cars that derailed in Lynchburg, Va., last week … were built after 2011, including the one that ruptured and spilled 30,000 gallons of oil into the James River, according to Eric Weiss, a spokesman at the National Transportation Safety Board. At least two other recent train derailments also involved newer tank cars.” – RS]

Despite Orders, Federal Tank-Car Safety Measures Are Slow in Coming

By JAD MOUAWADMAY 8, 2014

The derailment of a freight train carrying crude oil in Lynchburg, Va., last week was a reminder that basic safety features of the oil-by-rails business remain vastly inadequate, despite a flurry of emergency orders by federal regulators.

The federal Department of Transportation, which on Wednesday said that the growing movement of oil trains posed an “imminent hazard” to the public, has nevertheless been slow to toughen up tank-car standards.

While those delays have angered lawmakers and local officials, a small number of railroads and refiners have pushed the industry to change.

BNSF, the rail operator owned by Berkshire Hathaway and the largest carrier of oil from the Bakken region in North Dakota, said in February that it would buy 5,000 new tank cars with the latest safety features. It was a departure from the industry’s practice of railroads not owning cars.

Other railroads and refiners in Canada said they would charge higher rates for older cars in a bid to move the industry to adopt the newer models, built since 2011.

And regulators in Canada recently mandated the use of the newest model within three years.

But safety advocates, as well as railroad officials, point out that these newer cars — known as CPC-1232s — have also failed in recent crashes.

Ten of the 13 cars that derailed in Lynchburg, Va., last week, for instance, were built after 2011, including the one that ruptured and spilled 30,000 gallons of oil into the James River, according to Eric Weiss, a spokesman at the National Transportation Safety Board. At least two other recent train derailments also involved newer tank cars.

The fiery Lynchburg derailment, where 350 people were evacuated, was the latest in a series of accidents that have caught industry regulators as well as railroads off guard. Last year, an oil train exploded in Lac-Mégantic, Quebec, killing 47 people.

Critics have long contended that the tank cars that are commonly used to carry crude oil and other petroleum products do not have enough safety features to prevent a spill.

The federal safety board has repeatedly noted in recent years that the tank cars — called DOT-111s — have a high rate of failures in accidents. Making things worse, the kind of oil that comes out of the Bakken region is particularly flammable and prone to explosion.

During a safety forum recently, the departing chairwoman of the safety board, Deborah Hersman, warned of the risk of a “higher body count” if regulators did not update tank car standards.

On Wednesday, transportation regulators said they would urge shippers to stop using older tank cars to carry crude oil, recommending that they use cars with “the highest level of integrity.”

But industry officials point out that phasing out older cars too fast would lead to a shortage in tank cars, which could ultimately curtail the surging production of oil from the Bakken.

About 98,000 DOT-111 tank cars are in service carrying crude oil and ethanol in the United States and Canada, according to the Association of American Railroads. Their design dates to the 1960s and the overwhelming majority were built before 2011. Only about 18,000 were built after that date and could be modified easily if needed.

Thomas D. Simpson, the president of the Rail Supply Institute, a trade group representing shippers and tank car owners, said 55,000 new cars had been ordered through 2015.

The Association of American Railroads, the industry’s trade group, has said older cars should be rapidly phased out or refitted. It has proposed a set of improvements, including better protections to valves and handles, to prevent them from opening in a crash; the use of high-pressure relief valves; and thicker steel tanks and thermal protections. Those improvements are intended to further strengthen safety features that were incorporated after 2011.

The Transportation Department has been working on the new standard for several years. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx told a Senate committee hearing on Wednesday that his department was moving as fast as it could on new safety regulations for oil shipments by rail, including new tank standards.

Regulators sent their latest proposals to the White House last week, and said they expected to make their proposed rules public by the summer. This would be followed by a 60-day public comment period, which would also need to be reviewed. This means final regulations would not be likely before the end of the year.

“These issues are complex and recent crashes, including Lynchburg, show why we need to take the time to get it right and make sure the new design reflects the latest information,” said Casey M. Hernandez, deputy director of public affairs at the Department of Transportation.

The number of oil tank-car failures and accidents has risen sharply in recent years, as crude shipments have surged. In the emergency order directing railroads to provide traffic information to state officials, the Department of Transportation called the accident rate “startling.”

In 2013, there were 116 episodes involving tank cars carrying crude oil, according to the Transportation Department’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, more than twice the number of all episodes between 1990 and 2009. And 154 tank cars failed last year, according to federal records, a 50 percent jump from the previous year.

The details of what regulators are considering have not been made public and industry officials said they did not know yet what to expect. If the United States regulations are more stringent than those adopted in Canada, officials there said they would toughen their own rules to match them.

“We recognize the status quo isn’t acceptable,” said Mr. Simpson of the Rail Supply Institute. “If I could say one thing to the secretary of transportation, it is get the rule out. Give us certainty and we will act.”

A version of this article appears in print on May 9, 2014, on page B3 of the New York edition with the headline: Despite Orders, Federal Tank-Car Safety Measures Are Slow in Coming.

Bakken Crude, DOT-111, Federal Regulation (U.S.), Oil Industry, Rail industry, Rail Safety, Tank car design, Tank car retrofit

Bloomberg: Feds announce weak “emergency order”

May 9, 2014 Roger Straw

Repost from Bloomberg Business Week

The Government Takes a Weak Stab at Making Oil Trains Safer

By Matthew Philips | May 08, 2014

On Wednesday, a week after a train loaded with crude oil from North Dakota exploded in downtown Lynchburg, Va., dumping 30,000 gallons of oil into the James River, the Department of Transportation announced two moves to try to keep this from happening so frequently. It’s doubtful that either will make much of a difference in preventing what’s become a major safety hazard in the U.S.

Under a new “emergency order,” the DOT said it’s now going to require any railroad that ships a large amount of crude to tell state emergency responders what it’s up to. That includes telling them how much crude it’s hauling and the exact route it intends to take. Railroads also now have to provide local emergency responders with contact information of at least one person who’s familiar with the load, in case, you know the local fire chief needs to find out what the heck’s inside that overturned tank car that just unleashed a 400-foot fireball.

This emergency order applies to any train carrying more than 1 million gallons of crude specifically from the Bakken region of North Dakota. That’s essentially all the trains hauling crude across the U.S. right now. Since there aren’t enough pipelines connecting the oil fields in North Dakota, most of the nearly 1 million barrels the state produces leaves every day by train. It takes about 35 tank cars to haul 1 million gallons. Most of these oil trains are 100 cars long and stretch over a mile.

The reason this applies only to Bakken crude is twofold. First, that’s most of what’s being hauled. Second, the oil coming out of the Bakken is unlike any other kind that’s out there. It’s light, sweet, and superflammable, with high levels of propane and methane. That makes it almost impossible for local first responders to put out the fires that erupt when these trains derail. Sometimes, their only recourse is to evacuate the area and watch the tank cars burn.

Knowing these trains are coming might help the local fire and police departments prepare, but unless these local emergency teams get better equipment to deal with these fires, it’s unclear how much good any advance notice will do. And considering how frequently these trains are crisscrossing the country, you can’t evacuate town every time an oil train rumbles through. Prior notification will, however, give a heads up to all the local officials, who have been largely clueless about all the oil that’s getting transported by rail through their cities and towns. Last week, Lynchburg’s city manager, Kimball Payne, admitted to the Wall Street Journal that he had no idea that CSX was moving oil through town.

Data: American Association of RailroadsThe amount of oil moving by train each month has risen by nearly 400 percent since 2009

On top of the emergency order, the DOT on Wednesday issued a “safety advisory,” in which it “strongly urg[ed]” the oil companies shipping Bakken crude on trains to use the best tank cars they can. This advisory came from the Federal Railroad Administration, a division of DOT. How that differs from the organization’s normal position on safety isn’t clear. But it seems not unlike the FAA, after a rash of plane crashes, “strongly urging” airlines to buy the safest kind of planes they can and stop using old, outclassed ones.

The old, outclassed ones in this case is the DOT-111 model of tank car that’s been involved in most of the crude train explosions, including the one last summer in Quebec that killed 47 people. Although it’s widely deemed unfit for transporting crude, the DOT-111 is used to move the vast majority of oil sent by train in the U.S. It’s also the same classification of tank car that’s used to haul agricultural commodities, such as corn or soybeans.

According to the investment bank Cowen Group, about 100,000 DOT-111 tank cars in the U.S. are used to haul flammables such as crude and ethanol. About three-quarters of them may require retrofitting or a gradual phaseout. While some energy companies, such as Tesoro, are already choosing to phase out DOT-111s in their North Dakota operations, most companies are sticking with them until they’re forced to change. A complicating factor is that it’s not even clear, given how volatile Bakken crude is, whether using safer, better-reinforced cars would even help keep a derailed train from exploding.

The DOT’s safety advisory urging the use of better tank cars is a weaker step than what Canadian regulators did two weeks ago, when they aggressively moved to phase out all DOT-111s from hauling crude within three years. In an e-mail, a DOT spokesperson wrote that the agency is moving as quickly as it can to update its tank car regulations and that the safety advisory is a step it can take immediately. Last week, DOT Secretary Anthony Foxx sent to the White House a list of options on how to make crude-by-rail safer.

The DOT is obviously getting pushback from energy companies, which would have to foot the bill for leasing more robust tank cars. It’s unclear how many of the energy companies will decide to switch because the federal government is strongly urging them to.

Philips is an associate editor for Bloomberg Businessweek in New York.

Bakken Crude, Derailment, Explosion, Oil Industry

Multiple detailed analyses: Bakken crude has high levels of volatile organic compounds and alkane gases

May 7, 2014 Roger Straw

Repost from Salon

Why oil-by-rail is an explosive disaster waiting to happen

A recent spate of fiery train accidents all have one thing in common: highly volatile cargo from North Dakota

Lindsay Abrams | May 7, 2014

Several CSX tanker cars carrying crude oil in flames after derailing in downtown Lynchburg, Va., Wednesday, April 30, 2014. (Credit: AP/Luann Hunt)

In case the near continuous reports of fiery, deadly oil train accidents hasn’t been enough to convince you, Earth Island Journal is out with a startling investigative piece on North Dakota’s oil boom and the dire need for regulations governing that oil’s transport by rail.

The article is pegged to the train that derailed and exploded last summer in Quebec, killing 47 people, although it just as well could have been the story of the train that derailed and exploded in Alabama last November, the train that derailed and exploded in North Dakota last December, the train that derailed and exploded in Virginia last week or — let’s face it — any future accidents that many see as an inevitability.

The Bakken oil fields in North Dakota are producing over a million barrels of crude oil a day, more than 60 percent of which is shipped by rail. All that greenhouse gas-emitting fossil fuel is bad enough; that more oil spilled in rail accidents last year than the past 35 years combined is also no small thing. But the particular chemical composition of Bakken oil lends an extra weight to these concerns: according to the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, it may be more flammable and explosive than traditional crude.

The industry denies that there’s anything special about Bakken crude, but Scott Smith, a researcher at the nonprofit group Water Defense, has evidence to the contrary. From Earth Island Journal:

Smith now has conducted detailed analyses of Bakken crude from the three accident sites in Quebec, North Dakota, and Alabama, along with baseline data. He says he is the only outside expert to have done so and has shared those lab results with Earth Island Journal. Even government agencies – including the US Department of Transportation (DOT), which is tasked with regulating oil by rail transport – have been largely kept in the dark about the qualities that make Bakken crude so volatile as well as how it varies throughout the formation. “Despite the energy industry making assurances to DOT more than two months ago, we still lack data we requested and that energy stakeholders agreed to produce,” a Department of Transportation spokesperson told Reuters in March.

All the samples collected and tested by Smith share the same high levels of VOCs [volatile organic compounds] and alkane gases in what Smith says are exceptional combinations. According to Smith, 30 to 40 percent of Bakken crude is made up of toxic and explosive gases. Typically these gases are separated out of the crude oil before transport. A recent report by the Pulitzer Prize-winning website Inside Climate News speculates that because of the whirlwind pace of production in North Dakota and the absence of processing facilities, volatile gases like propane are not being removed at the wellhead.

There’s still a lot we don’t know about Bakken crude, Smith says. This includes the presence of metals, radioactive materials, and gases. Because of the varying depths of the Bakken formation, two wells a mile apart can produce crude oil with very different characteristics. This makes sampling and testing especially tricky. It also makes industry cooperation essential.

Smith still has vials of Bakken crude that he pumped out of the ground nearly a year ago. “When it gets above 80 degrees and you shake them,” he says, “it bends the top of the container. Any form of static electricity will ignite this stuff and blow it up.”

Independent reviews corroborate Smith’s findings. Chemists with California’s Office of Spill Prevention and Response examined Smith’s samples and concluded that the Bakken crude “resembles a typical crude oil that has been mixed with diesel or a diesel/gasoline mix. … Obviously, flammability and volatility are greater concerns with Bakken than with ‘typical’ heavier crudes.” In February The Wall Street Journal, based on its own analysis of data collected by the Capline Pipeline in Louisiana, reported that oil coming from the Bakken has significantly more combustible gases and a higher vapor pressure than oil from other formations. In early March, Canada’s Transportation Safety Board (TSB) issued its own findings from oil samples taken from the nine tank cars that did not derail in Lac-Mégantic. While the TSB does not contend, as Smith does, that the Bakken oil is significantly different from other light sweet crudes, the agency also found that oil coming out of the Bakken has a very low flashpoint – which means that it ignites easily or at a relatively low temperature – a level more similar to unleaded gasoline. When the rail cars went off the track in Lac-Mégantic, sending up sparks and static charges, it didn’t take much to set off explosions. “All of the conditions required for ignition to occur were present,” the TSB report concluded.

It’s a frightening warning worth repeating: without heightened safety standards and federal oversight, the many cities and communities through which trains carting Bakken crude pass are helpless in the face of a potential disaster. “I live in fear of waking up to a bunch of text messages and emails because there’s been a 100-car explosion in Chicago and 300,000 people are vaporized,” Smith said. “Unfortunately, that is a very real possibility if something’s not done.”

Lindsay Abrams is an assistant editor at Salon, focusing on all things sustainable.

Bakken Crude, Emergency Readiness & Response, Hazardous cargo transparency, Local Regulation

Community right-to-know laws: what is in those “bomb trains”?

May 6, 2014 Roger Straw

Repost from International Business Times

After Oil Train Accidents, US Communities Want To Know What’s Inside Rail Freight

By Meagan Clark | May 02 2014

A plume of smoke rises behind a train near Casselton, N.D., Monday, Dec. 30, 2013. Reuters

When an oil train derailed and caught fire in Lynchburg, Virginia, on Wednesday afternoon, City Manager Kimball Payne was as surprised as any of the town’s 77,000 residents; he had no idea that crude oil was being moved through town on a regular basis.

The accident, in which three tank cars tumbled into the James River, spilling 20,000 to 25,000 gallons of crude, was just the latest in a series of fiery oil train accidents around the country, which have sparked debate about the safety of freight rail and raised concerns among residents often unaware of the oil, gas and chemicals being transported through their communities.

As crude-by-rail has increased across the country in recent years, increasing 443 percent nationwide between 2005 and 2012, accidents have been on the rise. In the past year, eight explosive accidents, some fatal, have rocked communities from Alabama to North Dakota. Last year, an accident in Quebec caused 47 deaths and the evacuation of more than 2,000 people.

Those accidents are prompting federal regulators to propose, as soon as next week, standards for rail tank cars carrying oil, announced Department of Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx.

Community right-to-know laws dating from 1986 require facilities to disclose what hazardous chemicals are stored and used in a town, but the laws don’t extend to trains. By federal law, railroad and oil companies don’t have to disclose their exact freight contents or when and how much of their freight will pass through localities.

“Our community has a right to know what’s going on,” Bart Mihailovich, director of the Riverkeepers program at the nonprofit Center for Justice in Spokane, Washington, said. “What trains are traveling through Spokane and the inland northwest, what’s in them, and how dangerous are they? We have a right to know about emergency response plans and the risks we’re assuming by living, working and playing in this area.”

Payne, Lynchburg’s city manager, has lived in the area for 13 years and said he didn’t know trains were carrying oil through the bustling downtown district until the derailment this week.

“But I don’t know what’s on the tractor trucks going through the city every day either,” Payne said. “What would we do if we did know?”

“If anything’s going to be changed, it’s going to have to be changed at the federal level or maybe the state level. I know I have no authority over those railroads.”

The mayor of Casselton, North Dakota, where an oil train crash on Dec. 30 spilled 400,000 gallons of crude and forced the evacuation of residents, estimates that seven or eight trains a day, most carrying oil, pass through the rural town everyday. Edward McConnell remembers the city council had concerns over chlorine riding the rails several years ago. While training the fire department, the town spoke with the state and federal transportation departments about the contents and amounts of freight passing through.

“Their basic answer was when we have an accident, you’ll know what’s in the cars by the placard,” he said. Red diamond-shaped placards with the numbers 1267 designate crude, though not what type of crude, which could indicate how flammable or explosive it is.

“It would be nice to know [more details of the cars’ contents], but I don’t think it’s something that’s going to get much traction,” McConnell said. “Railroads have a lot of friends in Congress, and they’re not going to let too many bills through that [the railroads] don’t want. I’ve been dealing with railroads a lot of years — you can go up against them but at the end of the day they pretty much get what they want.”

Activist Matt Landon has decided the only way to know what’s passing through his neighborhood in Vancouver, Washington, is to track it himself. In April, he organized a group of seven volunteers to count how many oil trains are passing by Vancouver Bluff and, with infrared cameras, to monitor hydrocarbon gas venting out of the tank cars, a phenomenon called burping or off gassing. He hopes his efforts over time will force the government to increase regulation on the rail and oil industries.

“We have to protect our community,” he said. “It’s even hard for first responders to have access to this information. The U.S. government is deciding not to protect our communities so we have to stand up.”