Tag Archives: Tesoro

Crude By Rail, DOT-111, Emergency Readiness & Response, Federal Regulation (U.S.), Tank car retirement, Train speed, U.S. Department of Transportation

Groups Question Industry Influence on Oil Train Safety Rules, submit FOI request

Press Release from ForestEthics

Groups Question Industry Influence on Oil Train Safety Rules

Freedom of Information Requests Target Five Federal Agencies, Nearly 100 Lobbyists

By Eddie Scher, Jan 15, 2015

Today four public interest groups requested records exchanged between five US government agencies and nearly 100 oil and rail industry representatives on new oil train safety standards. The Department of Transportation announced yesterday that the agency would miss the January 15 deadline set by Congress and issue final rules by May 12, 2015.

“New oil train safety standards are decades late: the National Transportation Safety Board first called antiquated DOT-111 tank cars unsafe for hauling crude oil in 1991,” says Ross Hammond, ForestEthics US campaigns director. “But the administration seems to have trouble asking the oil and rail industry for common sense safety standards like speed limits, sharing information with firefighters, and a ban of the most dangerous cars.”

The Freedom of Information Act requests filed by ForestEthics, Communities for a Better Environment, Ezra Prentice Homes Tenants Association (Albany, NY), and Citizens Acting or Rail Safety (La Crosse, WI) name 97 individual lobbyists from the American Petroleum Institute, Association of American Railroads and specific oil and rail companies, including Chevron, Tesoro, and Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNSF). Among the lobbyists named are six former members of Congress: Trent Lott, Vin Weber, John Breaux, Steve LaTourette, Max Sandlin and Bill Lipinski.

“The public has the right to know how an army of lobbyists is influencing the Department of Transportation,” says Ross Hammond, ForestEthics US campaigns director. “Oil trains carrying millions of gallons of toxic, explosive crude oil threaten the 25 million Americans who live in the blast zone. DOT should listen their own safety experts and quickly finalize strong new standards that take DOT-111s off the tracks, slow these trains down, prepare first responders and protect families.”

Government agencies and officials covered by this FOIA request are US Department of Transportation, National Transportation Safety Board, Surface Transportation Board, Federal Railroad Administration, and Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA).

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ForestEthics demands that corporations and government protect community health, the climate, and our wild places. We’ve secured the protection of 65 million acres of wilderness by pushing major companies to shift hundreds of millions of dollars to responsible purchasing. www.ForestEthics.org

Air Quality, Bay Area Air Quality Management District, Bay Area Refineries

Bay Area Air Quality Management District approves plan to cut pollution at oil refineries

Repost from The Contra Costa Times

Bay Area Air Quality Management District approves plan to cut pollution at oil refineries

By Denis Cuff , 12/18/2014

SAN FRANCISCO — Regional air pollution regulators on Wednesday approved a far-reaching blueprint to cut Bay Area oil refinery emissions by 20 percent.

Under the plan, the Bay Area Air Quality Management District board will consider a package of air pollution rules in 2015 to reduce emissions from five refineries.

More rigorous monitoring of refinery emissions will be required. To assure continued clean air improvements, refiners will be required periodically to assess their pollution and ways to reduce it.

“This strategy will ensure that refineries are taking the strongest steps to cut emissions and minimize their impacts on neighboring residents and the region as a whole,” Jack Broadbent, the air district’s executive officer, said.

The plan was approved unanimously by the air board, which regulates pollution in nine counties.

The five Bay Area refineries are Chevron, Shell, Valero, Phillips 66 and Tesoro.

Bakken Crude, Crude By Rail, DOT-111, Federal Regulation (U.S.), Take Action

Bainbridge Island Review Guest Opinion: Why I blockaded an oil train

Repost from the Bainbridge Island Review

GUEST OPINION: Why I blockaded an oil train

BY ANNETTE KLAPSTEIN, August 16, 2014

On Monday, July 28, I joined Jan Woodruff of Anacortes and Adam Gaya of Seattle in locking ourselves to barrels full of concrete on the rail spur into the Tesoro refinery in Anacortes in order to keep an oil train from leaving the refinery.

Why would a 62-year-old retired lawyer and long-time resident of Bainbridge Island take such a drastic action?

The short answer is: I could not do otherwise.

This kind of resistance may seem extreme, but these are extreme times — these oil trains present an imminent threat to the lives and safety of tens of thousands of our friends and neighbors, and our politicians have done a woefully inadequate job of addressing this.

The puncture-prone DOT-111 tanker cars were deemed “inadequate” by federal authorities more than 20 years ago. Yet every week, more than a dozen of these trains travel through downtown Seattle to refineries including Tesoro.

These trains are carrying Bakken shale crude, which the DOT has warned is unusually volatile and can catch fire at temperatures as low as 75 degrees F!

There have been very frequent derailments, including one in Seattle last week (headed for the Tesoro refinery), which occurred despite a train speed of only 5 miles per hour. Had it been going much faster, the results would likely have been catastrophic.

There have been five explosions and massive fires associated with derailments within the past year, the worst being at Lac-Megantic, Quebec, where a derailment caused a massive explosion, leveling several city blocks and vaporizing 47 people. If this happens in Seattle near the sports stadiums during a Seahawks or Mariners game, tens of thousands of people will die a horrific death.

Tesoro had a terrible safety record even before the huge increase in oil-by-rail.

After its tragic 2010 fire, which killed seven workers, it was found to have committed 39 “willful” and five “serious” violations of safety regulations.

Tesoro is planning to build the massive Tesoro Savage Vancouver Oil Terminal, a project so fraught with potential problems that the Vancouver City Council has asked Governor Inslee to reject it.

The United States Supreme Court, in its questionable wisdom, has declared corporations to be “persons” with human rights. If Tesoro and the other oil companies trying to turn our beautiful state of Washington into the Bakken shale oil dealer to the world are “persons” it is terribly clear to me what sort of “persons” they are: psychopaths — lacking all conscience or empathy. If any other group of people exposed us to such risks, they’d be locked up as the criminals they are. Instead, we get cheap bromides about “safe fracking,” while wells across the country are poisoned and billions of gallons of water in drought-stricken California are ruined: all for cheap dirty energy, in an era when the ravages of climate change are becoming increasingly visible.

The fires in Washington last week were one small sample of ominous things to come. In under a week of the official fire season, more area was burned than in any full year of the past decade. If we do not take drastic measures to address climate change immediately, our children and grandchildren will have to live through the collapse of our civilization within decades. I cannot live with that on my conscience.

And what has our political leadership offered to address these issues? Feeble and half-hearted actions such as the federal plan to “phase out” the most unsafe oil-by-rail cars over the next four years.

In four years we are certain to have more disasters and more deaths — such a plan is criminally negligent and absolutely unacceptable.

We need a total ban on all shipment of Bakken crude by rail NOW, and a complete halt to the development of any new oil terminals in the Pacific Northwest.

The oil companies have no sense of responsibility to anything but their bottom lines. Companies that make decisions like this have no place doing business on our increasingly fragile planet, and we the people of the state of Washington have to draw the line.

Annette Klapstein is a Bainbridge Island resident and a retired attorney who worked for the Puyallup Indian Tribe for 21 years, primarily on fisheries issues.
Bakken Crude, Civil disobedience

Three arrested blockading train tracks in Pacific Northwest, protesting oil-by-rail expansion

Repost from Climate-Connections.org (Global Justice Ecology Project)

Three arrested blockading train tracks in Pacific Northwest, protesting oil-by-rail expansion

by Sara Sullivan | July 29, 2014
Three Seattle area resident blockade train tracks at the Tesoro’s Anacortes Refinery. Photo credit: @SeattleActivist
Three Seattle area resident blockade train tracks at the Tesoro’s Anacortes Refinery. Photo credit: @SeattleActivist

On Monday, July 28th, three locals locked themselves onto train tracks in Anacortes, Washington to protest oil-by-rail shipments.

The protesters blocked the tracks at an oil refinery owned by Tesoro, which is planning to expand.

They were particularly inspired to act after an train full of Bakken field crude oil headed to the Anacortes refinery derailed in Seattle last week, another in a series of such accidents that have been devastating throughout the US and Canada.

According to EcoWatch:

The protestors were demanding an immediate end to the shipment of Bakken oil through Northwest communities, all new oil-by-rail terminals proposed for the Northwest and Clean Air Act violations by oil refineries.

The protest lasted four hours and stopped one train. They were later arrested.

Two of the protesters are part of Rising Tide Seattle, including Ahmed Gaya.  At a recent protest, Gaya described the current expansion of fossil fuels and coastal refineries in the Pacific Northwest: “Our region is under attack from thousands of tank cars carrying bombs rolling through our communities.”