Tag Archives: North Dakota

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”

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.
The amount of oil moving by train each month has risen by nearly 400 percent since 2009Data: 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

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
 Why oil-by-rail is an explosive disaster waiting to happenSeveral 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.
Air Quality, Bakken Crude, Bay Area Refineries, Martinez CA, Rail accidents, Shell Oil, Tar sands crude

The hypocrisy of our our “friendly” giants: Big Oil in our back yards

Repost from The Martinez Gazette
[Editor: The following letter to the editor of The Martinez Gazette comes from our sister city across the Carquinez Strait, but it describes life in every refinery town.  Like Shell Oil, Valero in Benicia does an excellent job of contributing to popular charitable causes here and promotes itself as highly concerned with public health and safety – all the while filling our California skies with pollutants and seeking permission to bring in toxic and dangerous tar-sands and Bakken crudes that lay waste to the earth and its inhabitants from the strip mines and fracking fields all the way to our back door.  – RS]

‘Shell Oil is the hypocrisy at Earth Day’

 May 4, 2014

Dear editor:

Martinez celebrated John Muir’s Birthday and Earth Day last weekend at the John Muir Historical Site. Attendees were offered environmental information from sustainable and recyclable, to energy and water saving to causes of greenhouse gas (GHG) and global warming with the usual sponsors of the IBEW, Republic Services, City of Martinez, and Shell Oil of Martinez.

How does a fossil fuel industry corporation that produces 175 tons of hydrocarbons a day at it’s Martinez Refinery, owns 60 percent of Canadian Boreal Forest that is decimating the ecology to strip mine highly toxic tar sands crude oil to be shipped to its refineries, and has less than 2.5 percent of its overall expenditures in sustainable and renewable energy while totally divesting itself of solar energy and decreasing wind energy interests, get a place at John Muir’s Birthday/ Earth Day event? Certainly, John Muir would have left them off the list.

Shell and Big Oil was the elephant at the party. The Earth Day hypocrisy is that refineries in the Bay Area are the single largest stationary source of volatile organic compounds (VOCs). Shell is responsible for 492 million pounds of VOCs per year. Contra Costa County is the third most toxic county in the state of California. Short term exposure to sulfur dioxide, a refining byproduct, can result in respiratory illness and cardiovascular issues as well as aggravation of asthma. Do you or someone you know have asthma or respiratory illnesses?

There is no spare the air day for Shell or any refinery. When you can’t put a log on the fire, Shell emits over 700,000 tons of hydrocarbons per year, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Shell as well as the four other refineries in the Bay Area, are now refining a dirtier crude oil high in sulfur and other metals which emits more hydrocarbons. The tar sand oil from Alberta Canada is heavy like tar and sinks when it hits water, making oil spill recovery impossible. Shell receives this type of crude by ship and a spill of this type while off loading would foul our drinking water in Martinez.

Bakken crude oil, extracted from the Dakotas, is very explosive because of its low flash point and can explode before it is refined. This type of crude is being shipped by rail car through our downtown to the Bay Area refineries and has been in the news recently with train derailments and explosions in Casselton, North Dakota, Louisiana, Lac Megantic Canada and most recently in Lynchburg, Virginia.

The fossil fuel industry is always trying to improve their image within their communities despite their records as gross polluters. Chevron takes a single page ad in the Times every week telling us what a partner they are in the community since sending 15,000 residents to neighboring hospitals after a 2012 fire at their Richmond Refinery. Shell distributed flyers at Earth Day proposing to modernize their Martinez facility by cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 700,000 metric tons a year and reducing water usage by 15 percent. Why did it take them until the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said the fossil fuel industry is the leading contributor of GHG  emissions and a drought in California to get them to start reducing the amount of toxins they emit and the amount of water they use?

If the fossil fuel industry was truly committed to solving the energy issue as it relates to climate change and becoming a leader of green technology, they would not have eliminated wind and solar energy from their repertoire. The easy to extract oil has now been processed and these companies insist on extracting every drop of oil by drilling, hydro fracking, or strip mining to the point where the cost to extract crude oil is equal to the cost to burn it in an efficient engine.

The hypocrisy lies in the fact that Shell Oil made almost $20 billion dollars last year and was awarded the Martinez Business of the Year Award all the while convincing the planners, leaders, and deciders that they are entitled to a seat at the Birthday Party because they put change in the pockets of the community.

Our children and grandchildren are the apples of our eyes and the soft spot in our hearts. Shell Oil knows this and they focus their donations to Martinez Education Foundation, Martinez Unified School District, school scholarships, back packs so our kids can shelter in place, etc… for the children. THIS is the hypocrisy. They contaminate the ground, spew toxics that foul our air, our children’s air: because the money in the community’s pockets makes this poisoning acceptable.

Shell Oil is the Earth Day Hypocrisy.

– James Neu, Martinez

Bakken Crude, Davis CA, Local Regulation, Rail routing, Tank car design, Valero Crude By Rail

Davis City Council to staff: prepare a resolution opposing crude by rail

Repost from The Davis Vanguard
[Editor: Note that this article appeared six weeks ago.  – RS]

Council Takes Stand on Crude Oil Transport by Rail

By Michelle Millet  |  March 15, 2014

Richard-2nd-St

Last Tuesday [March 11, 2014] Mike Webb, Director of Community Development & Sustainability, presented a status update to council on the Benicia/Valero Oil by Rail Project.

In December of 2012 the City of Benicia was presented with a Land Use Permit Application from the Valero Refining Company who owns and operates an oil refinery located in Benicia, California.

Valero is proposing the “Crude by Rail Project” which would allow the refinery to receive a larger proportion of its crude oil deliveries by railcar.

The Land Use Permit Application states,  ”The primary purpose of the Project is to allow Valero access to more North American sourced crudes that have recently become available. The only viable option for transporting the crude oil from the North American sources to the Refinery is by railroad. Therefore, the objective of this Project is to enable Valero to replace up to 70,000 bbl per day of the crude oil currently supplied to the Benicia Refinery by marine vessel with an equivalent amount of crude oil transported by rail cars.”

According to Webb’s staff presentation the city of Benicia is currently in the review process. It is preparing an Environmental Impact Report that is expected to be released for public review and comment in the next month. Once the report is released it is assumed that there will be a 45 day comment period, and hearings at the Benicia Planning Commission and City Council are likely.

The amount of crude oil being moved by train in this country is growing. According to an Associated Press article, “U.S. crude oil production is forecast to reach 8.5 million barrels a day by the end of 2014, up from 5 million barrels a day in 2008. The increase is overwhelmingly due to the fracking boom in the Bakken region, which is mainly in North Dakota, but also extends into parts of Montana and Canada.”

If the Benicia Valero Project is approved it is estimated that 100 rail cars carrying Bakken crude oil in tank cars could soon be coming through Davis every day. Concerns have been expressed over the fact that the older tank cars that carry much of this flammable crude oil are inadequate and prone to rupture easily.

On January 23, 2014 the National Transportation and Safety Board called for tougher standards on trains carrying crude oil “The large-scale shipment of crude oil by rail simply didn’t exist ten years ago, and our safety regulations need to catch up with this new reality,” said NTSB Chairman Deborah A.P. Hersman. “While this energy boom is good for business, the people and the environment along rail corridors must be protected from harm.”

In February Davis citizens  Lynne Nittler, Milton Kalish, and Matt Biers-Ariel wrote an article for the Vanguard where they laid out some of the concerns community members have expressed over the potential dangers that come with transporting crude oil by train car.

They stated, “In the last year there have been 10 major rail accidents involving oil trains in the U.S. and Canada.  Last July, 47 people perished in a massive fireball when a train containing Bakken crude derailed and exploded in the Canadian town of Lac-Megantic, Quebec. Four more oil trains have derailed in Canada since then. In November, a train carrying the same Bakken crude derailed in Alabama, possibly caused by trestle tracks that collapsed under the weight of the heavy tank cars. Twelve of the cars exploded, fortunately not in a populated area. In the last week of December, another 18 tank cars carrying Bakken crude derailed and exploded just outside of Casselton, North Dakota, forcing the town to evacuate to avoid the plumes of toxic smoke from the ensuing fires that burned for more than a day.  Another oil train derailed and exploded in New Brunswick days later.”

On January 27th over 50 people attended the Natural Resource Commission meeting where this topic was addressed.  During public comment on Tuesday night NRC member Allan Pryor stated,  ”The NRC had the largest turn out in over 3-4 years over this issue the chambers were packed. We have never had a crowd so large, and they were vocal and unanimous in their opposition.”

After over an hour of public comment during their January meeting NRC members voted to approve a list of recommendations to council. Among the recommendations was a request that the City of Davis submit formal comments to the Draft Environmental Impact Report for the Benicia Valero Project when it is released for public comment.

One February 12, in an open letter to the Mayor of Benicia Mayor Pro Tem Dan Wolk stated, ”I am writing to express my and my constituents’ serious concerns over the proposed upgrading of the rail terminal at the Valero refinery to take in as much as 70,000 barrels of crude oil a day.”  He continued, “In both a literal and figurative sense, that rail line runs through the heart of our community.  I myself commute along this same rail line to and from my “day job” as a Deputy County Counsel for Solano County.  The thought of 100 tank cars full of Bakken Shale oil running through our community each day is absolutely disconcerting.  A similar accident in Davis as the one in Quebec would likely produce even more catastrophic results, in terms of loss of life and the destruction of our downtown.”

Wolk clarified at Tuesday’s meeting that he was not against the proposed project, and spoke in favor of the jobs the project could create. But he reiterated his concerns over the safety implications that it presented.

In their report presented to council staff states that their efforts are currently focused on gathering background information and initiating collaboration with other jurisdictions and with elected representatives from Davis and the region, including the offices of State Senator Wolk, State Representative Yamada, and U.S. Representatives Garamendi, Matsui, and Thompson.

Staff presented council with two following recommendations on how to proceed:

  1. Direct staff to continue to gather data, monitor the Benicia Valero project, and actively partner with other agencies, and State and Federal Representatives, on coordination of review and comments.
  2. Direct staff to continue to engage with appropriate regulatory authorities regarding the safety of the existing railroad operations/speeds/curve in Davis.

Mayor Krovoza suggested a third recommendation that directed staff to prepare a resolution stating that the city of Davis would oppose crude oil by rail transport through our community.

Council member Brett Lee expressed concerns that a resolution of this sort was largely symbolic and too open ended to have the impact they were hoping for.  When Korvoza disagreed Lee  posed the question, “Do you really think the railroad is going to stop transporting oil on the railroad line because the Davis City Council says we don’t want it passing through our community?”

He continued, “I think a more effective way would be to focus on the safety aspects so that our community is protected and other communities are protected.”  Lee clarified that he was not in favor of these cars coming through our community, and went on to say that he did not believe that having a symbolic gesture “excuses us or take us off the hook for dealing with the public safety issue.”

Ultimately Krovoza put forth a motion, that was seconded by Lee, which directed staff to begin preparation of a resolution where by the city of Davis would oppose crude by rail transport through our community due to public safety concerns until further consideration, including understanding of risks and needed mitigation measures.