Tag Archives: State regulation

Bakken Crude, DOT-111, Fracking, Oil conditioning, Oil producers, Oil stabilization, State regulation, Tank car retirement, Train braking systems, Train speed, Volatile gases

Maclean’s: So it turns out Bakken oil is explosive after all

Repost from Maclean’s Magazine

So it turns out Bakken oil is explosive after all

Producers in North Dakota’s Bakken oil fields have been told to make crude is safer before being shipped by rail
By Chris Sorensen, December 10, 2014

Oil TrainsAfter years of insisting oil sucked from North Dakota’s Bakken shale wasn’t inherently dangerous, producers have been ordered to purge the light, sweet crude of highly flammable substances before loading it on railcars and shipping it through towns and cities across the continent.

State regulators said this week that the region’s crude will first need to be treated, using heat or pressure, to remove more volatile liquids and gases. The idea, according to North Dakota’s Mineral Resources Director Lynn Helms, wasn’t to render the oil incapable of being ignited, but merely more stable in preparation for transport.

It’s the latest regulatory response to a frightening series of fiery train crashes that stretches back to the summer of 2013. That’s when a runaway train laden with Bakken crude jumped the tracks in Lac-Mégantic, Que., and killed 47 people in a giant fireball. In the accident’s immediate aftermath, many experts struggled to understand how a train full of crude oil could ignite so quickly and violently. It had never happened before.

Subsequent studies have shown that Bakken crude, squeezed from shale rock under high pressure through a process known as hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” can indeed have a high gas content and vapour pressure, as well as lower flash and boiling points. However, there remains disagreement about whether the levels are unusual for oil extracted from shale, and whether the classifications for shipping it should be changed.

Still, with more than one million barrels of oil being moved by rail from the region each day, regulators have decided to err on the side of caution and implement additional safety measures. For producers, that means buying new equipment that can boil off propane, butane and other volatile natural gases. Under the new rules, the Bakken crude will not be allowed to have a vapour pressure greater than 13.7 lb. per square inch, about the same as for standard automobile gasoline. Regulators estimate that about 80 per cent of Bakken oil already meets these requirements.

The industry isn’t pleased. It continues to argue that Bakken oil is no more dangerous than other forms of light, sweet crude, and is, therefore, being unfairly singled out. It has also warned that removing volatile liquids and gasses from Bakken crude would result in the creation of a highly concentrated, highly volatile product that would still have to be shipped by rail—not to mention additional greenhouse-gas emissions. It goes without saying that meeting the new rules will also cost producers money—at a time when oil prices are falling.

In the meantime, regulators on both sides of the border are taking steps to boost rail safety by focusing on lower speed limits, new brake requirements and plans to phase out older, puncture-prone oil tank cars. Earlier this year, Transport Minister Lisa Raitt said Canada would be “leading the continent” on the phase-out of older DOT-111 tank cars, which have been linked to fiery crashes going back 25 years. There are about 65,000 of the cars in service in North America, about a third of which can be found in Canada.

Air Quality, Cap-and-trade, State regulation, Water quality

Washington Gov. Inslee: Make polluters pay for transportation projects

Repost from The Seattle Times
[Editor: For details, see the Governor’s website: Inslee announces slate of proposals to curb pollution, transition Washington to cleaner sources of energy.  This week saw dramatic action on the part of two US governors.  See also NY Gov. Cuomo bans fracking.  – RS]

Gov. Jay Inslee proposes a 12-year, $12 billion transportation plan, saying fees on the state’s biggest polluters will help fund improvements.

By Mike Lindblom, Dec. 16, 2014

Work continues on the Highway 520 bridge project, looking west toward Seattle from Medina. The new bridge is expected to be done in spring 2016; the existing bridge will be removed. The governor’s proposal includes $1.4 billion to extend a new six-lane 520 to Interstate 5.
Work continues on the Highway 520 bridge project, looking west toward Seattle from Medina. The new bridge is expected to be done in spring 2016; the existing bridge will be removed. The governor’s proposal includes $1.4 billion to extend a new six-lane 520 to Interstate 5. | Ellen M. Banner / The Seattle Times

After two years of watching gas-tax increases tank in the Legislature, Gov. Jay Inslee proposed Tuesday to take a new approach: Charge major polluters for the right to emit carbon.

Inslee’s plan, featuring a “cap-and-trade” system, would generate $400 million a year, he said, to cover nearly 40 percent of his $12 billion, 12-year transportation improvement plan. The remainder would come from bond debt, existing gas taxes, tolls and an assortment of vehicle fees.

The new six-lane Highway 520 bridge would be completed all the way to Interstate 5, using $1.4 billion, while the state would abandon the idea of tolling the I-90 Mercer Island floating bridge. An additional $1.3 billion would widen Interstate 405 from Bellevue to Renton.

Several projects have been on the drawing board for years, and even failed in a regional ballot in 2007.

Ferry riders would see a two-year freeze in fares, while a fourth ferry would be built to join the new Tokitae and two others under construction.

“We can clean our air and water at the same time we are fixing our air and our roads,” Inslee said in Medina, overlooking the 520 construction site. “It is indeed a twofer.”

MORE . . .

 

Bakken Crude, California Regulation, Canadian regulation, Derailment, DOT-111, Federal Regulation (U.S.), State regulation

National Round-up: Calls to Ban Bomb Trains Ramp Up While Communities Await New Regulations

Repost from DeSmogBlog

Calls to Ban Bomb Trains Ramp Up While Communities Await New Regulations

By Justin Mikulka, 2014-12-15
ban bomb trains

Earthjustice has challenged the Department of Transportation’s denial of a petition by Sierra Club and Forest Ethics to ban the transportation of Bakken crude oil in DOT-111 tank cars.

“Most of the explosive crude oil on U.S. rails is moving in tanker cars that are almost guaranteed to fail in an accident,” explained Patti Goldman of Earthjustice.

“The risks are too great to keep shipping explosive Bakken crude in defective DOT-111s. The National Transportation Safety Board called them unsafe two decades ago, and by the Department of Transportation’s own estimates, the U.S. could see 15 rail accidents every year involving these cars until we get them off the tracks.”

At the same time Earthjustice was bringing this challenge, the Canadian government was announcing that it will ban 3,000 of the riskiest DOT-111s from carrying materials like Bakken crude.

And in California, where last week a train carrying grain derailed into the Feather River, democratic state senator Jerry Hill called on Governor Jerry Brown to impose a moratorium on oil trains in the state. The Feather River rail line is also used for Bakken crude oil trains.

In Toronto, the new mayor called for an end to these dangerous trains passing through the city.

“I said during the campaign and I’ll repeat it now, that I think we should be moving in the direction, in negotiation with the railways and the federal government, to stop movement of toxic and dangerous substances through the city at all,” reported The Star.

Perhaps the fact that the new mayor isn’t smoking crack like his predecessor has something to do with this rather clear-headed assessment. You would, after all, have to be on crack to think running DOT-111s filled with Bakken crude through highly populated areas was an acceptable practice.

Meanwhile in Baltimore, residents are fighting a new proposal for an oil-by-rail facility that would bring these trains right through their neighborhoods.

In addition to calls for outright bans of the DOT-111s, two states recently released new studies about the oil train issue.

In New York, Governor Andrew Cuomo is looking for ways to fund the oil spill clean up fund for the state. The fund is projected to be in the red financially by 2016 and currently collects no fees from the oil companies transporting the Bakken and tar sands oil through the state. As many as 44 oil trains carrying at least 1,000,000 gallons of oil, and often more than 3,000,000 gallons, cross New York each week.

Cuomo criticized the federal government’s lack of movement on new oil-by-rail regulations referring to their progress as “unacceptably slow” according to The Record Online.

“Over the past six months, our administration has taken swift and decisive action to increase the state’s preparedness and better protect New Yorkers from the possibility of a crude oil disaster,” Cuomo said. “Now it is time for our federal partners to do the same.”

Cuomo’s self-assessment of New York’s actions didn’t impress oil train activists. Sandy Steubing of Albany, NY, based group PAUSE isn’t pleased with the state’s progress.

“The Governor’s response is lame; he’s either urging other entities like the railroad and the Federal government to protect New Yorkers or he’s trying to appear like the measures he’s taking will protect us,” Steubing said. “There’s not enough foam in the entire state to protect us from an explosive derailment the likes of which we’ve seen five times since July of 2013.”

Meanwhile in Washington State, the draft of the 500-page 2014 Marine and Rail Oil Transportation Study was released. The report contains some staggering growth projections for oil-by-rail transportation in the state, as reported by The News Tribune.

The Department of Ecology’s report estimates that 12.7 billion gallons of oil were moved through the state by rail in 2013 alone and says 19 trains of roughly 100 tank cars each are passing through the state each week today. It predicts that traffic could mushroom to 137 weekly trains by 2020 if all proposed oil terminals and refinery expansion projects are permitted and utilized.

Facing this onslaught of oil-by-rail traffic for the state, Washington’s Governor Jay Inslee is proposing a new tax on oil transported through the state by rail.

In North Dakota, the birthplace of the modern oil-by-rail industry, meaningless new rail regulations will keep the bomb trains rolling. There is also a legal battle going on between the town of Enderlin and the rail operator Canadian Pacific. Canadian Pacific moves as many as 28 trains through Enderlin every day. Many stop and block roads and traffic in Enderlin causing traffic delays one would expect in Los Angeles but not in a town of 900 people in North Dakota.

In response, the town council made it illegal for trains to stop for more than 10 minutes in town. Now the town is being sued by Canadian Pacific. Unfortunately for the residents of Enderlin, Canadian Pacific has a strong argument that many municipalities are learning about now that they have become the home to oil train operations.

Kansas interstate commerce attorney Bob Pottroff explained the reality to Reuters, “Right now cities don’t have the right to tell a railroad it can’t park in the middle of their town.” If Enderlin were to win, Pottroff predicted the result could have far reaching effects as other municipalities opted to take some level of control over rail traffic within their borders.

In the face of this widespread opposition to the dangers posed by the oil-by-rail industry, there just happens to be a new industry-funded study showing that no new regulations are warranted.

The Railway Supply Institute funded a report prepared by The Brattle Group that concludes that all of the proposed regulations may have benefits but in every case they have found that the costs outweigh these benefits. In addition to this conclusion, Natural Gas Intelligence reports that The Brattle Group proposes one of the other favorite industry tactics for delaying new regulations. More research.

As communities across the country await new oil-by-rail regulations and continue to hear about close calls regarding oil train accidents the level of opposition to the dangers of transporting explosive oil in DOT-111s continues to grow. Unfortunately for them, the lobbyists for Big Oil and Big Rail are still hard at work protecting their profits above all else.

Bakken Crude, Oil conditioning, Oil stabilization, State regulation, Volatility

Safety rules on oil trains burn critics

Repost from The Times Union, Albany NY

Safety rules on oil trains burn critics

Most N.D. loads to Albany now under new volatility limits
By Brian Nearing, December 10, 2014
FILE - This Nov. 6, 2013 file photo shows a warning placard on a tank car carrying crude oil near a loading terminal in Trenton, N.D. Thousands of older rail tank cars that carry crude oil would be phased out within two years under regulations proposed in response to a series of fiery train crashes over the past year. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx said the government's testing of crude oil from the Bakken region of North Dakota and Montana shows the oil is on the high end of a range of volatility compared with other crude oils, meaning it's more likely to ignite if spilled. (AP Photo/Matthew Brown, File) ORG XMIT: WX101 ORG XMIT: MER2014082212045022 Photo: Matthew Brown / AP
FILE – This Nov. 6, 2013 file photo shows a warning placard on a tank car carrying crude oil near a loading terminal in Trenton, N.D. Thousands of older rail tank cars that carry crude oil would be phased out within two years under regulations proposed in response to a series of fiery train crashes over the past year. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx said the government’s testing of crude oil from the Bakken region of North Dakota and Montana shows the oil is on the high end of a range of volatility compared with other crude oils, meaning it’s more likely to ignite if spilled. (AP Photo/Matthew Brown, File)

New safety rules on Bakken crude oil shipments imposed by North Dakota will not affect about 80 percent of oil arriving daily on massive tanker trains at the Port of Albany. Some oil opponents in the Capital Region are criticizing the limit as toothless.

Amid opposition from oil companies, the North Dakota Industrial Commission set a limit late Tuesday that is supposed to reduce the volatility of Bakken crude — or potential explosiveness — before it can be shipped out of state on trains. Officials in New York and other states along the routes of oil trains had been pushing for a limit in after major accidents in Canada, and states including Alabama and Pennsylvania.

The new North Dakota standard is well above volatility found in Bakken crude by Canadian safety officials after 47 people were killed in a massive explosion and fire when a crude oil train derailed in Quebec in July 2013.

North Dakota’s new measure was praised as “aggressive” in a joint news release by state Environmental Conservation Commissioner Joe Martens and Transportation Commissioner Joan McDonald.

“Reducing the volatility of Bakken crude at the source protects public health, protects the environment and provides an additional safeguard for New Yorkers and communities across the country,” according to the prepared statement. Attempts to obtain further comment Wednesday from DEC were not successful.

“This does not really provide much of a margin of safety for the public. It still does not address the (Bakken) flammability issue,” said Chris Amato, a staff attorney with Earthjustice, a Washington, D.C.-based environmental legal group and DEC deputy commissioner for natural resources from 2007 to 2011.

In October, Amato’s group filed a petition with DEC claiming the state has the power to immediately ban the most common type of oil tanker rail cars — called DOT-111s — from entering the port loaded with flammable Bakken oil. DEC disagreed that it had the power to take such a step, which would have made Albany the first place in the country to bar the aging tankers, which in derailments have been prone to rupture, leading to fires and explosions.

Amato called the North Dakota volatility standard “better than nothing,” adding that DEC “has its head in the sand on all crude-by-rail issues.”

“The new rule has no effect, zero,” said Sandy Steubing, a spokeswoman for the group People of Albany United for Safe Energy, which wants crude oil shipments into Albany halted. “It is like setting a speed limit of 100 miles an hour and saying we will catch the cars going 120,” she said. “I don’t know if North Dakota just did this for show.”

Assemblyman Phil Steck of Colonie and Albany County Executive Dan McCoy also questioned the effectiveness of the measure.

“Reducing the volatility of crude oil at the source before shipping is welcome news and is something for which I have been advocating. But North Dakota hasn’t set a standard that challenges the oil industry enough,” said McCoy. And Steck, a fellow Democrat, said North Dakota also failed to require removal of hydrofracking chemicals from the Bakken, which he said makes the crude more flammable.

Albany Mayor Kathy Sheehan said “any step that makes our community safer is a step in the right direction.”

Starting April 1, Bakken crude shipped out of the shale oil fields of North Dakota can have a vapor pressure of no more than 13.7 pounds per square inch (psi), slightly below a federal hazardous materials stability standard of 14.7 psi.

Bakken crude above this new standard would have to be treated with heat or pressure at the wells to remove its most volatile components.

North Dakota Mineral Resources Director Lynn Helms has said about 80 percent of Bakken crude being shipped already falls below this standard. But he also told the Associated Press that the change would “significantly change the characteristics of crude oil that’s going into market.”

A vapor pressure rating is a measurement of how rapidly a liquid evaporates into a gas and spreads into the air, making it more volatile and prone to explosion. The Bakken crude that caused the massive fireball in Lac-Megantic, Quebec, that killed 47 people had a psi of between 9 and 9.3, which is well below the new North Dakota safety standard.

In a report after the tragedy, the Canadian Transportation Safety Board found the Bakken crude involved was as volatile as gasoline. The volatility, combined with “large quantities of spilled crude oil, the rapid rate of release, and the oil’s … low viscosity were likely the major contributors to the large post-derailment fireball and pool fire,” the board found.

By comparison, crude oil pumped from beneath the Gulf of Mexico has a psi of about 3, making it much less likely to explode in an accident, according to figures reported this spring in the Wall Street Journal. In Texas, crude oil produced in the Eagle Ford shale formation has a psi of about 8.

According to the North Dakota Petroleum Council, the average Bakken crude has a psi of between 11.5 and 11.8, again below the new state safety standard.

The North Dakota standard is “far from a solution that the communities that are dealing with oil trains on a daily basis are looking for,” said Connor Bambrick, an analyst with Environmental Advocates of New York.