Tag Archives: Oil stabilization

Crude By Rail, Derailment, DOT-111, Emergency Readiness & Response, Evacuation, Federal Regulation (U.S.), Fire, Marine transport, Oil stabilization, State regulation, Tank car retirement, Tank car retrofit, Volatile gases

Albany NY Area officials say crude-oil transport is getting safer

Repost from The Press Republican, Plattsburgh, NY
[Editor: the safety improvements showcased here are far from adequate, nevertheless, it’s a good update on conditions in New York.  Sen. Schumer is absolutely right – the DOT-111 tank cars should be taken out of service immediately… and not just in New York.  And Bakken crude should be stabilized before it is transported (not just conditioned) … just as it is in Texas.  – RS]

Area officials say crude-oil transport is getting safer

Lohr McKinstry, December 6, 2014
A DOT-111 oil tank car sits on a siding in the Midwest. New York state is adopting tougher rules on use of the tank cars, which pass through Essex and Clinton counties enroute to Albany,

LEWIS — New state regulations on crude-oil trains should help make them safer, Emergency Services officials from Essex and Clinton counties said recently.

State agencies have implemented 66 actions designed to strengthen standards, regulations and procedures to make the transport of crude oil by rail and water in New York safer and to improve spill preparedness and response.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo received a status report outlining the progress made by multiple state agencies after they were directed to evaluate the state’s capacity to prevent and address crude-oil accidents.

Local leaders have been concerned about the 100-car-plus oil trains moving through Clinton and Essex counties as the crude oil extracted in North Dakota arrives via Canadian Pacific Railway trains.

The oil is on its way to the Port of Albany, where it is stored for transport to various refineries.

IMPROVEMENTS

Essex County Emergency Services Director Donald Jaquish said he sees the new procedures as a safety benefit to the North Country.

“It’s a step in the right direction,” he told the Press-Republican. “We’re in a better position than we were a year ago.”

There’s been concern the trains could derail, and the oil burn or explode, as it has in other regions, and Jaquish praised Canadian Pacific for trying to make the tracks and tank cars safer.

“Upgrading the DOT-111 tank cars, rail replacement and maintenance, and specialized training are all beneficial to safety.

“Canadian Pacific has been helping us with training, hands-on-experience, that first responders need for these situations.”

EVACUATION PRACTICE

The tank cars are not owned by Canadian Pacific but by oil companies and vendors, and as a federal common carrier, the railroad is required to transport them.

Both the railroad and federal regulators have pushed for upgrades to the DOT-111 single-shell cars or a switch to the stronger DOT-109 or 112 cars.

“In almost any situation we get, we will be doing evacuations,” Jaquish said. “We’ve been working with Clinton County on planning and implementation.”

Clinton County Emergency Services Director Eric Day said any improvements to the transport of oil cars are welcome.

“At the end of the day, what they’ve done is good, no question,” Day told the Press-Republican. “Any regulatory move to make the DOT-111 cars safer is a plus. It’s a long time coming.”

One problem is that there are thousands of DOT-111 tank cars still in service, he said.

“There are so many of them (DOT-111 cars) out there on the tracks. They’re not going to stop moving the oil before they fix the cars. The oil is not going to stop coming any time soon.”

STATE GUIDANCE

Day said enhanced state regulations on oil shipments will be helpful.

“If there are changes that are pushed upon them (shippers), it can only make it safer. We’ve seen some of the benefits of the state’s work with regard to planning,” he said.

“We have guidance now on firefighting potential on dealing with these things. There are so many variables. Multiple cars of this crude oil on fire are a different animal.”

He said that, thanks to a donation, they now have the foam needed for such fires. The expensive product costs $30,000 for 1,000 gallons of foam but puts out crude-oil-based fires.

VOLATILE GAS

The North Dakota Industrial Commission has proposed draft regulations to remove the volatile gases from the oil before it is shipped, and Day said that provision is a good one.

“One of the things that makes the Bakken crude so volatile are the gases in the oil. The gas works its way out and is stuck in the head space of the car. If they breech, there’s flammable gas; cars that aren’t breeched and heat up, the gas could expand and be a problem.

“Removing that gas is a possibility before they put in the cars and ship it. If they could do that, it’s a big win.”

FEDERAL ROLE

Cuomo called for the federal government to mandate tank-car upgrades or replacement.

“The federal government plays a vital role in regulating this industry, and Washington must step up in order to expedite the implementation of safer policies and rules for crude-oil transport,” he said in the release.

The governor said the oil-production industry has resisted stronger tank-car standards and regulations requiring companies to reduce the volatility of crude before shipment.

A new report from the Brattle Group for the Railroad Supply Institute, a trade group, showed that a proposed federal rule to upgrade rail-tank cars could cost $60 billion.

According to the report, the high price tag is largely due to the costs associated with potential modifications to tank cars, early retirement of existing tank cars, temporarily using trucks instead of rails for transport and lost service time for tank cars under modification or awaiting modification.

‘TIME BOMBS’

U.S. Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-NY) has also come out against use of DOT-111 cars.

“These outmoded DOT-111 tank cars … are ticking time bombs that need to be upgraded ASAP,” the senator said in a news release.

“That is why for two years, since the tragedy at Lac-Megantic, I have pushed federal regulators to phase out and retrofit these cars.

“As a result of our efforts, the federal Department of Transportation has put a proposal on the table that could start taking these cars off the tracks within two years, as well as restrict the speeds at which these trains operate.”

On July 6, 2013, a 74-tank-car train carrying Bakken light crude derailed in Lac-Megantic, Quebec, and the tank cars exploded, killing 47 people, destroying 30 buildings and spilling 1.5 million gallons of heavy crude oil.

That disaster was followed by oil-train-explosion derailments in Alabama, North Dakota, Illinois and New Brunswick, Canada.

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.

Crude By Rail, Emergency Readiness & Response, Hazmat notification, Oil stabilization, Parked trains, Phillips 66, Rail Safety, Sacramento Area Council of Governments (SACOG), Santa Maria Refinery

Sacramento Area leaders call for strong safety controls on oil trains headed west and south

Repost from The Sacramento Bee

Sacramento leaders call for more crude-oil train safety

By Tony Bizjak, 11/14/2014
A tanker truck is filled from railway cars containing crude oil at McClellan Park in March.
A tanker truck is filled from railway cars containing crude oil at McClellan Park in March. Randall Benton

Concerned about potential oil spills and fires, Sacramento leaders are calling for stronger safety controls on a Phillips 66 proposal to transport crude oil via trains through Sacramento neighborhoods to the oil company’s refinery in San Luis Obispo County.

In a letter approved Thursday by board members of the Sacramento Area Council of Governments, regional officials are asking San Luis Obispo County to require the oil company to notify local fire officials before any crude oil train comes through the area, limit the parking of crude-oil-laden trains in the urban area, provide funding for training on fighting oil fires, and require trains and tracks to have modern safety features.

SACOG officials said they are not taking a stance against rail shipments of crude oil in general.

“Our intent is not to prohibit any types of shipments, our intent is to ensure that where they are shipped that we impose the most reasonably feasible safety measures for our communities,” the agency’s attorney Kirk Trost said during a board briefing this week.

A boom in domestic oil production in North Dakota, Colorado, Texas and other Western states in recent years has prompted safety concerns after several high-profile oil-train explosions, including one in Canada that killed 47 people last year. The federal government is formulating new safety regulations, including a requirement for sturdier tank cars.

SACOG’s letter comes in response to a Phillips 66 proposal to ship oil via train five days a week to its Santa Maria Refinery in San Luis Obispo County. Many of those trains are likely to come through Northern California, via Roseville, and run through downtown Sacramento, West Sacramento, downtown Davis and East Bay cities. Some could take a route through Sacramento to Stockton, then west into the Bay Area. The route east of Roseville is unknown.

The Sacramento group, in its letter, also joined a growing national chorus of cities and states demanding that particularly flammable crude oil from the Bakken region of North Dakota be stripped of its more volatile elements before being loaded on trains.

In an email to The Sacramento Bee, Phillips 66 spokesman Dennis Nuss said Phillips does not plan to ship Bakken oil to its Santa Maria Refinery. He did not specify which types of crude oil the refinery will receive.

“Phillips 66 is working to ensure the long-term viability of the Santa Maria Refinery and the many jobs it provides,” he wrote. “Our plans for this project reflect our company’s commitment to operational excellence and safety while enhancing the competitiveness of the facility.”

SACOG, a transportation planning agency formed by the region’s six counties and 22 cities, previously called for similar safety measures on another oil company plan to transport oil, likely Bakken, through Sacramento to a Benicia refinery. Valero Refining Co. officials say they hope to start next year shipping two 50-car oil trains a day through Sacramento to that plant.

Railroads have long successfully argued that federal railroad regulations pre-empt states, counties and cities from imposing any rules on their operations. In their letter, Sacramento officials contend that San Luis Obispo County and Benicia can require the oil refineries to write safety measures into their contracts with the rail carrier companies. A rail law expert, Mike Conneran of the Hanson Bridgett law firm in San Francisco, said Sacramento’s argument might have legal merit, but likely will have to be tested in court.

Crude-oil trains have proliferated in recent years around the country as producers use newer fracking technologies to unearth previously trapped oil deposits in the West. California Energy Commission analysts say very little of that oil is being transported on rail into California currently, but they say as much as 22 percent of the state’s oil will arrive by train by 2016.

One such shipment comes through Sacramento, traveling on the rail line that cuts through North Sacramento, midtown, Land Park and Meadowview en route to Richmond in the Bay Area. The BNSF Railway company recently filed papers with state emergency officials indicating they are running up to two trains a week on that route, an increase from one train a week earlier this year.

Another major crude-by-rail facility, outside of Bakersfield, is expected to open before the end of this year and may take shipments of crude oil on rail that will come through Sacramento. A spokesman for Plains All American, owner of the facility, declined comment on the routes the trains will take, saying that will be a decision the railroad companies will make.

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/news/local/transportation/article3935260.html#storylink=cpy

 

Bakken Crude, Massive increase in crude-by-rail, Oil stabilization, State regulation, Volatile gases

North Dakota to Require Producers to Treat Crude Before Shipping

Repost from The Wall Street Journal

North Dakota to Require Producers to Treat Crude Before Shipping

Move Comes Amid Growing Safety Concerns About Oil-Laden Trains

By Chester Dawson, The Wall Street Journal, Nov. 13, 2014

Reuters
Reuters

North Dakota plans unprecedented steps to ensure crude pumped from the state’s Bakken Shale oil producing region is safe enough to be loaded into railroad tank cars and sent across the country.

In the first major move by regulators to address the role of gaseous, volatile crude in railroad accidents, the North Dakota Industrial Commission, which regulates energy production in the state, said it would require Bakken Shale well operators to strip gases from crudes that show high vapor pressures.

“We believe the vast majority of our Bakken oil will fall well below the standard,” Lynn Helms, director of the state’s Department of Mineral Resources, said at a news conference.

The proposed state rule will require all operators to run crude oil through equipment that heats up the crude and forces out gases from the liquid. An estimated 15% of current producers without such equipment will have to submit quarterly test results showing their wells don’t exceed the state’s proposed 13.7 pounds a square inch vapor pressure limit, Mr. Helms said.

Those changes could make the new rules more costly for the state’s smaller producers. Jack Ekstrom, vice president of government affairs for Whiting Petroleum Corp. said the rules don’t appear to be “a major material cost” he said. “This is perhaps more of a concern to a marginal or smaller operator.”

A representative for the North Dakota Petroleum Council, an industry lobbying group, criticized the proposed rules for “micromanaging the industry,” and said they could lead to unintended consequences such as increased burning of excess natural gas at well sites.

The proposal also would prohibit blending condensate or natural gas liquids back into crude and require rail loading terminals to inform state regulators of any oil received for shipment exceeding the vapor pressure limits, Mr. Helms said.

He said the new rules would cost industry, but not enough to make drilling Bakken oil uncompetitive.

Scott Skokos, an organizer with landowners’ group Dakota Resource Council, called the move by the regulator “a step in the right direction.”

The state’s decision follows months of officials’ playing down the possibility that Bakken crude was more volatile and could explode more readily than other North American crudes.

Several oil trains have derailed and exploded since 2013, spurring concern about the safety of growing numbers of oil-carrying trains delivering oil produced by the shale boom.

‘…a step in the right direction.’

—Scott Skokos, Dakota Resource Council

The Wall Street Journal reported in February that Bakken crude contained several times the amount of combustible gases as oil from elsewhere. Relying on an analysis of data collected at a pipeline in Louisiana, the Journal pointed out that oil from the Bakken Shale had a far higher vapor pressure, making it much more likely to emit combustible gases, than dozens of other crude oils.

The proposed rules specify how wells should treat the oil to ensure it is “in a stable state,” according to Mr. Helms.

Executives from the top oil companies working in the Bakken Shale told state regulators in a September hearing that their crude is safe to transport by train using existing treatment methods, opposing potentially costly requirements that they make the oil less volatile before shipping it.

But studies by the U.S. and Canada have indicated that Bakken crude is more volatile than other grades of oil. Industry-funded studies, including one commissioned by the NDPC, have said Bakken oil is no different than other types of light oil.

The state expects to issue final rules by December 11th.

Production of light shale oil through hydraulic fracturing has soared, accounting for most of the additional three million barrels a day of oil that the U.S. produces today compared with 2009. Much of that is shipped to refineries by railcars, especially crude produced from Bakken Shale due to the area’s few pipelines.