Tag Archives: U.S. Department of Transportation

Crude By Rail, Derailment, DOT-111, Ethanol, Federal Rail Administration

South Carolina ethanol train derailment raises concerns

Repost from Greenville Online
[Editor: Note that recent new DOT rules do NOT require rail carriers to notify state emergency agencies concerning movement of ethanol trains.  Significant quote: “Ethanol rail transportation increased 500 percent from 2003-2012, according to the Association of American Railroads, while rail transport of crude oil increased more than 4,000 percent since 2008, according to Department of Transportation figures.”  Details on the derailment here.  – RS]

Upstate derailment puts focus on potential dangers

Nathaniel Cary, The Greenville News, August 4, 2014

Several times a week trains hauling millions of gallons of ethanol lumber along tracks through the heart of Upstate cities and towns, carrying the flammable gas toward a plant in Belton, where it’s then delivered to gas stations across the Southeast.

But in the dead of night on a recent Friday, something went wrong on the train’s journey.

It happened at 1:30 a.m. July 25 while the city of Spartanburg slept. A train, operated by CSX, went off the track. Before it could stop, an engine, a hopper car filled with sand and three tank cars filled with ethanol ended up in a ditch.

The ethanol-filled tankers landed upside down, and there they sat, within sight of houses and a few hundred yards across a field overgrown with kudzu from the city’s railroad museum and AMTRAK station.

The train was pulling 90 black tank cars filled with about two million gallons of ethanol, more than enough to fill three Olympic-sized swimming pools.

Fortunately, the train was moving very slowly around a curve and none of the cars punctured. No liquid spilled, no fire ignited, said Spartanburg Fire Chief Marion Blackwell.

Investigators with the Federal Railroad Administration are still trying to determine what caused the engine to leave the track, but the wreck highlighted a safety debate that’s arisen as the amount of crude oil and ethanol the nation transports by rail has increased exponentially with the country’s energy boom.

The Department of Transportation has proposed new rules to improve oil and ethanol train safety in the wake of derailments in recent years that have killed dozens, caused evacuations and spilled millions of gallons of oil and ethanol.

Transportation safety officials say trains are transporting higher amounts of crude oil and ethanol on trains that can stretch a mile long. Tank cars aren’t built thick enough to prevent punctures and spills when they are involved in accidents, and trains are driving too fast through urban areas, officials say.

Last July, a train operator didn’t brake sufficiently when a 72-car oil train went around a curve in the Quebec city of Lac Megantic. The train derailed and cars exploded, killing 47 people. Fires burned for days and destroyed the village center.

One woman died and two others were seriously injured in June 2009 while they waited at a train crossing in Cherry Hill, Illinois, when an ethanol train derailed and caught fire. An ethanol train that derailed in Pennsylvania in 2006 spilled 485,000 gallons and caused a two-day evacuation in parts of the city of New Brighton.

In South Carolina, there have been 145 incidents involving transportation of Class 3 flammable liquids — which includes crude oil and ethanol — by rail since 1972, when the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration began keeping track of data.

No lives were lost in those incidents, but they caused $2.8 million in damages, according to PHMSA data.

The most devastating train accident in South Carolina since 1972 took place in Graniteville in 2005 when a Norfolk Southern train carrying chlorine — a Class 2 gas — crashed into an idle train.

One of the tank cars holding chlorine breached and released the gas into the air. The train engineer and eight others died and 554 people were checked at hospitals for breathing difficulty, according to an investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board.

“I thought the wake-up call here would have been the chlorine gas spill,” said Susan Corbett, president of the 5,400-member South Carolina chapter of the Sierra Club.

The Sierra Club has come out in support of the proposed safety rules, though the club’s stance is that it’s taken too long to draft the rules and will take too long to implement the changes over the next three years.

“Anytime you’re moving this stuff around, either by rail or by truck, there’s always a risk,” Corbett said. “It definitely is something that should be of concern for all of us because of the health risks and disasters.”

Local routes

Trains carrying large quantities of ethanol travel through cities and towns in the Upstate more than 150 times every year. The routes run through the heart of Spartanburg and Greenville and through smaller towns like Williamston and Pelzer.

Most of the trains originate in Illinois and normally stretch 82 cars long, said Steven Hawkins, who as president and CEO of the Greenville & Western Railway Co., which owns and operates 13 miles of rail line from Pelzer to Belton in Anderson County, hauls the trains for the final leg of their trip.

The trains hold 80 cars of ethanol and two hopper cars, one at each end, filled with sand or gluten to act as a buffer between the “ignition source” engine and the hazardous materials cars, Hawkins said.

CSX runs the route from Illinois to Pelzer, where Hawkins’ Greenville & Western takes over, driving the final six miles to an ethanol plant in Belton owned by Lincoln Energy Solutions, a Greenville-based biofuel delivery company, he said.

That’s the route the train was following when it derailed in Spartanburg, CSX officials have said.

Greenville & Western runs about 150 routes each year with the hazardous material cars, he said.

The transportation safety board says the surge in ethanol production has altered the way ethanol is transported by rail. It used to be carried in smaller quantities, but now entire trains carry nothing but the flammable gas additive.

Ethanol rail transportation increased 500 percent from 2003-2012, according to the Association of American Railroads, while rail transport of crude oil increased more than 4,000 percent since 2008, according to Department of Transportation figures.

“While the soaring volumes of crude oil and ethanol traveling by rail has been good for business, there is a corresponding obligation to protect our communities and our environment,” said NTSB Chairman Deborah Hersman.

CSX participated in the Department of Transportation review and analysis of the current transportation practices and tank car standards and works closely with first responders, communities, oil producers, tank car owners and other railroads “to make the safe transportation of these important products ever safer,” CSX spokeswoman Carla Groleau said.

In May, Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx issued an emergency order for rail carriers to notify state emergency agencies when trains pass through their states carrying more than 20 cars of volatile crude oil harvested from the Bakken shale region in North Dakota.

The South Carolina Emergency Management Division received notice from both of the state’s major rail carriers, CSX and Norfolk Southern, that they don’t transport Bakken crude oil through South Carolina in those amounts, spokesman Joe Farmer told The Greenville News.

No such notification is required for trains carrying ethanol.

Safety proposal

The Department of Transportation wants to phase out outdated tank cars — called DOT-111s — it calls vulnerable to puncture and explosion in a derailment.

Trains with any of the older cars would face speed limits of 40 miles per hour.

Tank car owners could retrofit the cars with a safer shell and better braking rather than switch to a new tank style. Trains that meet all standards could travel 50 mph outside of 100,000-population cities. Trains that don’t upgrade to enhanced braking systems would face a 30 mph limit.

The Department of Transportation would also require a risk assessment of rail routes and railroad conditions that high-hazard flammable trains use.

National ethanol groups balked at the safety proposals announced by the Department of Transportation, saying ethanol isn’t as volatile as Bakken crude oil and that the rules may paint with too broad a brush by classifying oil and ethanol together.

“Ethanol is a low volatility, consistent commercial product with a 99.997 percent rail safety record,” said Bob Dinneen, president and CEO of the Renewable Fuels Association. “Unlike oil from fracking, ethanol is not a highly volatile feedstock of unknown and differing quality and characteristics being shipped to a refinery for commercial use.”

But ethanol and oil trains both use the DOT-111s that the NTSB called inadequate in the aftermath of the Cherry Hill ethanol disaster.

Only 14,000 tank cars of the 92,000 in the North American fleet are built to the latest industry standards, according to the Association of American Railroads.

The rules won’t change operations for the Greenville & Western because its train only travels 25 miles per hour and it doesn’t own any of the tank cars it transports, Hawkins said.

Tank car safety changes will be up to the shippers since they own most tank cars, he said.

Hawkins, who bought the short-rail line in 2006 after a 20-year-career in rail service, said he’s got a spotless safety record.

“We’re already at such a low speed anyway, not that we ever want to have that type of incident as has occurred, but at the slow speed that we operate, it would be a non-event,” Hawkins said.

Bakken Crude, Crude By Rail, Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), Hazmat notification

Amtrak provides crude oil train details states had withheld

Repost from McClatchyDC
[Editor: The author notes that this method of obtaining information on transport of crude by rail “only worked in the few places where Amtrak owns or controls track over which freight trains operate.”  – RS]

Amtrak provides crude oil train details states had withheld

By Curtis Tate, McClatchy Washington Bureau, August 4, 2014
US NEWS RAILSAFETY MCT
Empty tank cars roll south along Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor at Newark, Del., on July 28, 2013. The cars were unloaded at the nearby PBF refinery in Delaware City, Del., and are heading back to North Dakota for another shipment. (Curtis Tate/MCT)

WASHINGTON — Two loaded and two empty crude oil trains operate daily over Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor in Maryland and Delaware, according a document submitted by the passenger railroad in response to a Freedom of Information Act request.

Last month, Norfolk Southern, the freight railroad that operates the crude oil trains, went to court in Maryland to block the state Department of the Environment from making the same information available to McClatchy and the Associated Press.

The Amtrak document also contains some details of Norfolk Southern’s crude oil train operations in Pennsylvania. That state last month denied requests from McClatchy and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette to provide information about the shipments.

Dave Pidgeon, a Norfolk Southern spokesman, declined to comment.

In May, following a series of derailments, fires and spills involving crude oil trains, the U.S. Department of Transportation required railroads to notify states about train shipments of 1 million gallons or more of Bakken crude oil to help emergency responders better prepare for an incident.

There is no federal law that shields the crude oil train information from public release. Nonetheless, railroads asked states to sign confidentiality agreements, and some states, including Maryland and Pennsylvania, complied.

However, other states, including California, Washington, Illinois and Florida, did not sign the agreements and have made the crude oil train details available to McClatchy and other news organizations.

In Maryland, according to documents filed on July 23 in the Circuit Court for Baltimore City, state Attorney General Doug Gansler’s office had voided the confidentiality agreements that a state official had signed. However, both Norfolk Southern and rival carrier CSX contested the attorney general’s ruling and sought an injunction to prevent the imminent release of the records.

Pennsylvania is one of the largest single destinations in the country for Bakken crude oil by train. On Monday, McClatchy appealed the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency’s denial of an open records request for crude oil train details there.

Amtrak owns or controls lines in Pennsylvania, Maryland and Delaware that Norfolk Southern uses for freight. The national passenger railroad is subject to the federal Freedom of Information Act.

According to Amtrak, Norfolk Southern’s crude oil trains operate over 21 miles of the Northeast Corridor, the busiest passenger train route in the country. The crude oil trains travel between Perryville, Md., and Newark, Del., sometimes alongside Amtrak’s passenger trains. They also use a portion of a line east of Harrisburg, Pa., that Amtrak controls.

The trains are generally 100 cars and weigh 13,500 tons loaded and 4,000 tons empty. By contrast, Amtrak’s flagship Acela Express trains include two locomotives and six cars, weighing a total of 624 tons.

Freight trains commonly operate over the Northeast Corridor at night, but some run during the day. Amtrak restricts Norfolk Southern’s crude oil trains to 30 mph from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. Overnight, the trains can operate at 50 mph.

Norfolk Southern crude oil trains cannot exceed 135 cars on Amtrak lines.

The Norfolk Southern trains supply the PBF Energy refinery in Delaware City, Del. The facility closed in 2009, only to be revived with rail deliveries of domestic crude oil.

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2014/08/04/235391/amtrak-provides-crude-oil-train.html?sp=/99/200/#storylink=cpy

 

Bakken Crude, Bridge safety, Crude By Rail, Federal Regulation (U.S.), Massive increase in crude-by-rail, Rail inspection

Bridge wake-up call

Repost from Philipstown.info, Philipstown, NY
[Editor: This story out of New York is a wake-up call for us all.  Bridge safety in Northern California is a serious issue, and  we have heard little discussion on the subject as Valero  proposes to bring oil trains over the Sierra, through the Sacramento River Valley and  across the protected Yolo  Basin and Suisun Marsh.  Another refinery proposes to send these trains over the 85-year old Benicia Bridge, then alongside our beautiful Carquinez Strait and down through the heavily populated communities on the east shore of the San Francisco Bay.  – RS]

CSX Says Bridge Safe

Crude oil trains make daily crossings

By Michael Turton, August 1, 2014

A railway bridge located on the Hudson River across from Cold Spring has visibly deteriorated however its owner says it remains fit for daily use by freight trains. The bridge is located at milepost 51 on the River Line, a 132-mile stretch of track that runs from northern New Jersey to Selkirk, New York, just south of Albany. The bridge and the tracks are owned by the Florida-based CSX Corporation. At the bridge, the tracks are located just a few feet from the riverbank.

Concrete has crumbled beneath one of the bridge's vertical supports.

The span in question, along with a second bridge a few hundred yards to the south, crosses over a pair of narrow channels that enable waters from a wetland located west of the tracks to flow in and out freely as river levels change due to tides, wind and rain. Concrete that forms a part of the bridge’s structure has crumbled beneath a vertical support directly under the tracks.

In an email to The Paper, CSX Spokesperson Kristin Seay, said that the bridge is “current” with regard to its annual inspection. “It was last inspected on Feb. 6, 2014, and was determined to be safe for railroad operations.” Seay said that all CSX bridges are inspected annually.

The bridge to the south also shows signs of deterioration but to a lesser extent. On that structure, concrete has fallen away, exposing the reinforcing metal bar.

Oil transport by rail on the rise

The condition of tracks and bridges along the Hudson River has become more significant locally as part of a national trend which has seen an exponential increase in the transport of crude oil and other hazardous materials by rail in recent years. On July 23, 2014, USA Today reported that “The number of oil-carrying cars run by seven major U.S. railroads jumped from 9,500 in 2008 to 407,761 in 2013…” Closer to home, Seay told The Paper that “CSX operates an average of two to three loaded crude oil trains per day over (the River Line) route…” That adds up to between 700 and 1,000 crude-oil trains that pass directly across from Philipstown each year.

An average of two or three trains carrying crude oil cross over the bridge daily.

Two high profile, rail-related tragedies that occurred in recent months no doubt add to local concern. Last July, in Lac-Megantic, Quebec, a train loaded with oil exploded, killing 47 people. Local insurance claims were estimated at $50 million. And in May of this year, a train derailed in Lynchburg, Virginia, dumping some 50,000 gallons of crude oil into the James River.

A July 23 editorial in the Albany Times Union underscored what it called “failure of government to adequately ensure rail safety” as evidenced by such accidents.

Federally regulated

Freight rail lines in the U.S. are regulated almost entirely at the federal level by the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA). Federal law requires that all railroad companies inspect their own bridges on an annual basis — regardless of the size of the bridge. Companies must determine the load capacity of each bridge, certifying to the state where it is located that it is capable of bearing the daily load it must handle.

On July 23, the Federal Department of Transportation proposed comprehensive rules to improve crude oil transportation safety. Recommendations include an immediate phasing out of older tank cars, new standards for tanker cars that carry highly hazardous materials, reduced operating speeds, and required notification of first responders.

At the state level, the New York State Department of Transportation’s (DOT) Rail Safety Inspection Section participates in FRA safety programs — mainly for staff training and certification. Beau Duffy, DOT Director of Communications, told The Paper that the agency also conducts random inspections or “blitzes” of rail facilities, focusing on track conditions and mechanical equipment such as brakes and wheels. He said that DOT does not however inspect bridges.

National issue … local focus

The deteriorating bridge across from Cold Spring brings what has become a significant national issue into very local focus.

Commenting on the CSX bridge, a Federal Railroad Administration official told The Paper that the FRA would work with CSX to ensure it is in compliance with all federal safety standards noting that FRA inspectors regularly evaluate railroad companies’ bridge safety practices to identify potential weaknesses.

Local senior-elected officials also commented on the River Line bridge. “Like many of my neighbors, I’m extremely concerned about the integrity of this bridge,” said Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D-18th District, NY), when notified of the issue by The Paper. “I immediately brought this to the … attention of CSX, and I’ll work closely with officials to ensure inspections are conducted and any necessary repairs are done promptly. With billions of gallons of oil barreling down the Hudson, we must be vigilant that issues like this are addressed quickly — the safety of our neighbors, environment and communities is far too important.”

Maloney is a member of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, and has been working with the chairman of that committee to examine the environmental and economic impact of shipments of crude oil along the Hudson River.

New York State Sen. Terry Gipson (D-Dutchess, Putnam) also commented. “The impact of an oil train incident along the shore of the Hudson River would be devastating to our communities who rely on the river for their drinking water and our local economy,” Gipson said via email. “That is why I … have expressed strong concerns to our federal government about the need for safety improvements relating to the interstate transportation of crude oil along the Hudson River. This effort includes ensuring necessary track maintenance and infrastructure investments that will allow businesses to operate more effectively and safely.”

Photos by M. Turton

Bakken Crude, Crude By Rail, Massive increase in crude-by-rail

Recent history: the rise of Bakken crude by rail

Repost from Bloomberg
[Editor: Significant quote: “‘The East Coast was left on a figurative island when everyone in the middle of the country got access to low-priced crude coming out of the Bakken, and oil by rail was its lifeline….The next challenge is exports.'”  – RS]

Bakken Rail Bet on a Feeling Pays Off for Global’s Slifka

By Lynn Doan Aug 1, 2014

When Eric Slifka landed in North Dakota’s Bakken shale field three years ago, he says he was overcome by “this feeling of a lot of growth. You could feel the pressure.”

The fervor was so strong that Slifka, chief executive officer of Global Partners LP (GLP) in Waltham, Massachusetts, decided in that single trip to carry Bakken crude on railcars that his company had been using to haul ethanol to New York. His first full trains started a wave of deliveries that rescued East Coast refiners from the brink of closing amid the rising cost of oil imported from Africa and the North Sea.

Shipments of U.S. oil by rail have since doubled to more than 1 million barrels a day, sparking a national debate over safety, and volumes may mount if the government allows more exports of crude, easing a four-decade ban. Global and other midstream carriers are preparing themselves for a chance to serve that market.

“The East Coast was left on a figurative island when everyone in the middle of the country got access to low-priced crude coming out of the Bakken, and oil by rail was its lifeline,” Bradley Olsen, managing director at energy investment bank Tudor, Pickering, Holt & Co., said by phone from Houston. “The next challenge is exports.”

Shale Boom
Global Partners, a tax-exempt master limited partnership with a $1.19 billion market value, was worth half that when Slifka flew into the Bakken in 2011 to meet a local entrepreneur who owned a rail facility along the Canadian Pacific (CP) line. North Dakota’s oil production had surged by a record 42 percent to 310,000 barrels a day. It would go on to surpass 1 million this April, helping turn the U.S. into the world’s largest oil producer.

The flood of domestic crude has put pressure on the federal government to lift a ban on U.S. exports imposed by Congress in 1975 in response to the Arab oil crisis. Crude-by-rail companies will have to compete with pipelines to bring supplies to the coast if the prohibition is lifted, Olsen said.

“Once you’re trying to export, you’re just trying to reach the water, and you don’t care about going to a specific refinery,” he said. “So you’re just as likely to ship it on a pipeline to get it to a dock.”

New Rules
The boom has also ignited regulatory battles from coast to coast. The derailment and explosion of an oil train in Lac-Megantic, Quebec, in July 2013 that killed 47 people thrust rail operations into the limelight.

In New York, Global is facing a ban on expanding its Albany operations to include tar sands. In Oregon, state regulators said in March that Global unloaded more oil than permitted at its Clatskanie terminal that sends Bakken crude along the Columbia River by barge.

Global said the Oregon complex is “in full compliance” with regulations in a March 5 e-mail. It sent a letter to Albany County on March 14 describing the county prohibition as “arbitrary and capricious.”

The U.S. Department of Transportation laid out a plan last week to phase out a generation of tank cars for crude shipments and impose speed limits, braking requirements and route stipulations.

While the industry is working with regulators to determine the safest way to ship oil, Slifka, now 49, said at an energy conference in Washington July 14 that “rail may actually be the safest mode of transportation for crude.”

Refinery Squeeze
On his first visit three years ago, so many companies were racing into the region to squeeze out oil from the Bakken that Slifka couldn’t find a hotel room. He said he stayed in Estevan, Saskatchewan, and drove 30 miles across the Canada-U.S. border to meet Don Bottrell, who owned a women’s clothing business, oil and gas wells and a trans-loading site in the area.

The biggest wave of refinery closings had meanwhile struck the East Coast as the price of North Sea Brent crude, the international benchmark, climbed. Sunoco Inc. was threatening to shut its Philadelphia refinery if it didn’t find a buyer, and it idled the Marcus Hook plant in Pennsylvania. ConocoPhillips halted output from its Trainer complex, and Hovensa LLC closed a plant in the U.S. Virgin Islands that supplied the region.

The North Sea grade cost as much as $8.52 a barrel more than West Texas Intermediate today, the highest premium since June 24. WTI was at $97.21 at about 11:16 a.m. in London and has traded below the international benchmark since the end of 2010.

Crude Champagne
“East Coast plants had the highest costs because they ran the champagne of oils, very light, very low-sulfur crudes predominantly from West Africa,” Kevin Waguespack, senior vice president of energy consulting firm Baker & O’Brien Inc., said by telephone from Houston July 28. “The Bakken reset their feedstock costs by several dollars a barrel. They’ve gone from losing to winning.”

EOG Resources Inc. (EOG), at the time the second-largest oil producer in the formation, moved its first trainload on BNSF Railway Co.’s tracks to Stroud, Oklahoma, on Dec. 31, 2009.

The first dedicated train of Bakken crude arrived at Global’s fuel terminal in Albany, which had handled ethanol and refined fuels such as gasoline, on Oct. 25, 2011.

Others followed. Enbridge Inc. (ENB)’s 80,000-barrel-a-day Eddystone rail complex outside Philadelphia received its first train in May. The Carlyle Group (CG) and Sunoco formed a joint venture to keep the Philadelphia refinery open and are adding a rail track that will take as many as 14 unit trains of Bakken oil a week. Delta Air Lines Inc. (DAL) bought Conoco’s Trainer plant and on July 21 signed a contract for 65,000 barrels a day, more than a third of the plant’s capacity, that will initially arrive by rail.

Global Expansion
Global bought a majority interest in two Bakken terminals after that first delivery to the East Coast, expanded its complex in Albany so it could send barges of oil down the coast, and secured a five-year contract to supply Phillips 66 (PSX)’s 238,000-barrel-a-day Bayway refinery in New Jersey in 2013.

The company bought the complex in Clatskanie, near Portland, the same year. On July 8 Global said it was building its first Gulf Coast oil-by-rail terminal in Port Arthur, Texas, as a destination for heavy crude from western Canada.

“If you look back historically on where oil is coming from and how it was transported, it has completely changed,” Slifka told an oil industry conference in Washington July 14. “You might as well take a pipeline map and turn it upside down.”

With the Port Arthur terminal, Global is positioned for the flood of petroleum that may soon be leaving the nation’s shores should federal policy makers relax the decades-old export ban. In June, the Commerce Department granted Enterprise Products Partners LP (EPD) and Pioneer Natural Resources Co. (PXD) permission to export ultra-light oil known as condensate.

“Nobody can be sure where the market is going or what we will be carrying, but we are sure that we have positioned ourselves to carry whatever it demands,” Slifka said at the meeting in Washington.

Reporter on this story: Lynn Doan in San Francisco.  Editors responsible for this story: Dan Stets and David Marino at Bloomdale, and Alaric Nightingale, Rachel Graham.