Tag Archives: North Dakota

Bakken Crude, Benicia Planning Commission, Crude By Rail, Valero Benicia Refinery

Benicia OKs Sacramento request for more time to review crude oil rail shipment plans

Repost from The Sacramento Bee

Benicia OKs Sacramento request for more time to review crude oil rail shipment plans

By Tony Bizjak, Saturday, Jul. 12, 2014
Lac-Megantic-One-Year-Later
Family and friends cross the railroad track along the crash site after a memorial service early Sunday, July 6, 2014 in Lac-Megantic, Quebec, for the 47 victims of last year’s devastating oil train derailment (AP Photo/The Canadian Press, /Paul Chiasson

Benicia has granted a request by Sacramento officials and others for extra time to review a plan by Valero Refining Co. to run two trains daily carrying crude oil through downtown Sacramento, Roseville, West Sacramento and Davis to its Bay Area refinery. The Sacramento Area Council of Governments, which represents local cities and counties, had requested extra time, saying they are concerned about the project’s safety risks. The new response deadline is Sept. 15, officials said.

Valero is asking the city of Benicia for an OK to begin receiving daily crude-by-rail shipments, including possibly the more volatile oil from the North Dakota Bakken fields. Federal officials issued a warning this year about that fuel after several train explosions, including one that killed 47 people in Canada.

The Valero plan, involving two 50-car trains a day through Sacramento, is among the first of what California officials say is an expected boom in crude-by-rail shipments through the state, prompted by the lower cost of North Dakota and Canadian crude.

The draft environmental report, issued last month by Benicia, included an analysis that says a derailment and spill might happen only once every 111 years. That analysis was authored by a University of Illinois professor, Christopher Barkan, who formerly worked for the American Association of Railroads and does research supported by the association. Barkan, an expert on hazardous rail transport, said in an email that his work for Benicia was not influenced by his association with the railroad association.

Local officials say they plan to issue written responses to that assessment this summer. City of Davis official Mike Webb has challenged the report risk assessment, saying, “It only needs to happen once to be a real problem.”

Also on Friday, a coalition of activists who oppose rail shipments of crude oil called on the state Legislature or the governor to ban or place a moratorium on construction of any more crude rail terminals similar to the one Valero is proposing.

The state Office of Spill Prevention and Response announced it will conduct a series of public workshops later this month soliciting opinions on how it should expand its work to inland areas, including along rail lines. The new state budget includes funding, from oil refinery fees, for the spill office to deal with the expected increase in crude oil shipments by rail. The agency will release information on its “legal and regulations” Web page on Friday.

Crude By Rail, donner, Local Regulation, Sacramento CA, State regulation, Take Action, Valero Crude By Rail

Crude oil train protests planned in Sacramento and Davis

Repost from The Sacramento Bee
[Editor:  Check this out – Benicia’s uprail friends are getting out on the tracks, and they are getting the media’s attention.  Thanks to everyone who is following this story.  Benicia is in the “crosshairs” of a nationwide – worldwide – focus on this dangerous and dirty money grab by the oil and rail industries.  More and more, thoughtful people are saying, “No, not here.”  – RS]

Crude oil train protests planned in Sacramento, Davis

By Tony Bizjak, Jul. 8, 2014
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Jake Miille / Special to The Bee | A crude oil train operated by BNSF snakes its way west through James, Calif., just outside the Feather River Canyon in the foothills into the Sacramento Valley.

Laurie Litman, who lives a block from the rail tracks in midtown Sacramento, says oil and rail companies are about to put her neighborhood and plenty of others in danger, and she wants to stop it.

Litman is among a group of environmental activists in Sacramento and Davis who will gather this week at the Federal Railroad Administration office in Sacramento and at the Davis train station to protest plans by oil companies to run hundreds of rail cars carrying crude through local downtowns every day. The protests, on the anniversary of an oil train crash and explosion that killed 47 people in the Canadian city of Lac-Megantic, will spotlight a plan by Valero Refining Co. of Benicia to launch twice-daily crude oil train shipments through downtown Roseville, Sacramento and Davis early next year.

“Our goal is to stop the oil trains,” said Litman of 350 Sacramento, a new local environmental group. “We are talking about 900-foot fireballs. There is nothing a first responder (fire agency) can do with a 900-foot fireball.”

Sacramento Assemblyman Roger Dickinson, an advocate for increased crude oil rail safety, will speak at noon Wednesday during the Sacramento event at 8th and I streets. The Yolano Climate Action group will distribute leaflets at the Davis train station Tuesday and Wednesday evening about the Valero proposal. The Davis City Council recently passed a resolution saying it opposes running the trains on the existing downtown Davis rail line.

The protests are among the first in the Sacramento area in response to a recent surge in crude oil rail transports nationally, prompted mainly by new oil drilling of cheaper oils in North Dakota, Montana and Canada. In California, where rail shipments have begun to replace marine deliveries from Alaskan oil fields and overseas sources, state safety leaders recently issued a report saying California is not yet prepared to deal with the risks from increased rail shipments of crude.

Oil and railroad industry officials point out that 99.9 percent of crude oil shipments nationally arrive at their destinations without incident, and that the industry is reducing train speeds through cities, helping train local fire and hazardous material spill crews, and working with the federal government on plans for a new generation of safer rail tanker cars. Valero officials as well say their crude oil trains can move safely through Sacramento, and a recent report sponsored by the city of Benicia concluded that an oil spill along the rail line to Benicia is highly unlikely.

In a letter last week, however, four Northern California members of Congress called on the federal government to require oil and rail companies take more steps to make rail crude shipments safer. The letter was signed by Doris Matsui, D-Sacramento, George Miller, D-Martinez, Mike Thompson, D-St. Helena, and John Garamendi, D-Walnut Grove.

“We are especially concerned with the high risks involved with transporting .. more flammable crude in densely populated areas,” the group wrote to U.S. Department of Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx. “Should spills or explosions occur, as we have seen over the last year, the consequences could be disastrous.”

The four lawmakers said oil companies should be required to remove more volatile gases from Bakken crude oil before it is shipped nationally from North Dakota. The federal government issued a warning earlier this year about Bakken crude after several Bakken trains exploded during derailments. The California Congress members also encouraged federal representatives to move quickly to require railroads to install advanced train control and braking systems. Industry officials have said those systems, called Positive Train Control, are expensive and will take extended time to put into place.

Representatives from a handful of Sacramento area cities and counties are scheduled to meet this week to review Valero’s crude oil train plans, and to issue a formal response to the environmental document published two weeks ago by Benicia that concluded derailments and spills are highly unlikely. City of Davis official Mike Webb said one spill and explosion could be catastrophic, and that as more oil companies follow Valero’s lead by bringing crude oil trains of their own through Sacramento, the chances of crashes increase.

The Sacramento group has indicated it wants a detailed advanced notification system about what shipments are coming to town. Those notifications will help fire agencies who must respond if a leak or fire occurs. Local officials say they also will ask Union Pacific to keep crude-oil tank cars moving through town without stopping and parking them here. The region’s leaders also want financial support to train firefighters and other emergency responders on how to deal with crude oil spills, and possibly funds to buy more advanced firefighting equipment. Sacramento leaders say they will press the railroad to employ the best inspection protocols on the rail line.

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2014/07/08/6541363/crude-oil-train-protests-planned.html#storylink=cp

 

Bakken Crude, Crude By Rail, Derailment, Explosion, Volatile gases

BizJournal: Why does North Dakota oil explode so much?

Repost from The Minneapolis / St. Paul Business Journal 

Why does North Dakota oil explode so much?

By Mark Reilly, Managing Editor- Minneapolis / St. Paul Business Journal – July 8, 2014

Oil-industry shortcuts made in the early days of the North Dakota oil boom have left the state awash with crude oil that’s so unstable many pipeline companies won’t ship it. Cue the exploding trains.

The Wall Street Journal reports that only one company in North Dakota has installed stabilizer equipment to remove explosive gases from the crude oil before transport. Federal regulations don’t call for such measures, but pipeline companies do, and that’s one reason why North Dakota oil is so often shipped by rail — and why oil trains have exploded so ferociously when they derail.

RELATED: Oil train tally: More than 40 per week into Minnesota

Now, faced with the prospect of an explosion in a populated area, regulators are reconsidering those rules. Industry groups have played down the danger, saying that train cars can handle the issue.

The Journal contrasts North Dakota with Texas, another region that’s seeing a boom in fracking-produced oil that’s possibly even more combustible. But in Texas, companies spent hundreds of millions of dollars to add stabilizing equipment and now ship it via pipeline with no trouble.

Crude By Rail, Emergency Readiness & Response, Lac-Mégantic, Valero Benicia Refinery

NPR: First Responders Unprepared For Another Train Disaster

Repost from National Public Radio
[Editor: I remember with horror the breaking news last July of the catastrophic derailment and explosion in Lac-Mégantic.  Here in Benicia, we were preparing for a public forum to help residents understand the environmental impacts associated with our Valero Refinery’s bid to begin shipping crude oil by rail.  Lac-Mégantic was a shock, and a wake-up call.  Ever since that day, our concerns have expanded – crude by rail brings environmental disaster, and piles on catastrophic risk for everyone along the rails from the Midwestern provinces and states to the refinery.  – RS]

First Responders Unprepared For Another Train Disaster

By David Schaper, July 6, 2014

One year after an oil train derailed and exploded in Lac-Mégantic, Quebec, some firemen and first responders say they still don’t have the training or manpower to handle a similar disaster.

Transcript

LINDA WERTHEIMER, HOST:

Ever since that Canadian train derailment, first responders all across North America wonder, what if it happens here? And as NPR’s David Schaper reports from this side of the border, many say they don’t have the training, the equipment or the manpower necessary to respond to an oil train disaster in their cities and towns.

DAVID SCHAPER, BYLINE: The images of that fiery blast that incinerated much of Lac-Mégantic’s downtown last summer still haunt many first responders.

GREGG CLEVELAND: It’s one of those things that certainly keeps me up at night.

SCHAPER: La Crosse, Wisconsin, fire chief Gregg Cleveland is watching one of the dozens of freight trains that rumble through the heart of the city of about 52,000 people every day. Many of the trains are hauling crude oil, some stretching more than a mile long, tank car after tank car full of volatile Bakken crude.

CLEVELAND: I think anytime that you have the railroad with the amount of hazardous materials in Bakken crude oil, the question is not if, but when.

SCHAPER: La Crosse is a long and narrow city nestled between the Mississippi River to the west and towering sandstone bluffs to the east, which presents unique challenges. An oil train could derail in the river or in a large environmentally sensitive marshland or in bluff-side neighborhoods that would be cut off from the only escape route over the tracks. Gregg Cleveland says, his professional firefighting force has a hazmat response team, but…

CLEVELAND: We really need more people trained in response to railroad incidents. We have virtually no foam, and the equipment that we have cannot apply the large volumes of foam that we would need in a railroad emergency.

SCHAPER: Furthermore, La Crosse has the only hazmat response team in west central Wisconsin. So along hundreds of miles of railroad track, the fire chief says, it could be up to small-town volunteer departments to initially try to contain an oil train spill and fire.

CLEVELAND: They’re not going to have the resources to do that. I think that’s a pretty safe assumption.

SENATOR HEIDI HEITKAMP: If we are going to do this right, we need to have a nationwide evaluation of the readiness.

SCHAPER: That’s Democratic Senator Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota. Her state is producing most of the oil that is shipped by rail, and the amount has increased more than 6,000 percent over the last five years. She’s sponsoring a bill that would identify best practices for first responder training and equipment.

HEITKAMP: And then we need to figure out how do we get the resources to the local firefighters, how we get the training to the local firefighters and how do we institutionalize this because crude oil is not going to go off the trains anytime in the future.

SCHAPER: Heitkamp is also pushing for extra funding for first responder training, which the railroad industry is also stepping up to provide.

HEITKAMP: And it’s our goal with the training that those first responders have as realistic an experience as possible.

SCHAPER: Lisa Stabler is president of the Transportation Technology Center in Pueblo, Colorado, which is part of the American Association of Railroads. Under an agreement with the federal Department of Transportation, the center is providing enhanced crude by rail disaster training for firefighters from around the country, free of charge. Stabler says the program will include hands-on training with real derailed tank cars going up in flames.

LISA STABLER: And that allows them to learn and, if necessary, to make mistakes in a very safe environment so that they don’t mistake make mistakes when they’re out trying to take care of an incident with the public.

SCHAPER: Back in La Crosse, Wisconsin, fire chief Greg Cleveland applauds the increased training efforts. But he wonders why this didn’t happen sooner, given that dozens of trains carrying explosive crude already roll through his city every week.

CLEVELAND: Quite honestly, we’re playing catch up very quickly here.

SCHAPER: And Cleveland notes that costly training and equipment needs will be with his community, just like the oil trains, for quite some time to come.

David Schaper, NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.