Tag Archives: Washington State

Crude By Rail, Funding for emergency response, Massive increase in crude-by-rail, Schools, State regulation, Train speed, Washington State

Washington Governor Inslee says state will act on oil trains

Repost from The Olympian, Olympia Washington

Inslee says state will act on oil trains

By Andy Hobbs, November 21, 2014
Representatives from Washington and Oregon gather at Olympia City Hall for the Safe Energy Leadership Alliance summit on Friday, Nov. 21, 2014. TONY OVERMAN

The number of oil trains running across Washington is unacceptable, and the Legislature will consider bills in the upcoming session that mandate advance notification of oil shipments by rail as well as more funding for railroad crossings and emergency response training, Gov. Jay Inslee said Friday.

King County Executive Dow Constantine added that oil companies are raking in profits while “the rest of us are picking up the costs.”

“Those who are profiting should shoulder the financial burden,” Constantine said.

They were speaking to the Safe Energy Leadership Alliance that met Friday at Olympia City Hall to address the surge of oil and coal trains passing through Washington.

The alliance is a coalition of local, state and tribal leaders from the Northwest who say the trains threaten the environment, economy and public safety.

As shipments of oil increase in the Puget Sound region, so does the likelihood for spills and accidents. The Department of Ecology reports that 19 fully loaded oil trains crisscross the state every week, with the number expected to reach 59 oil trains if current refinery proposals are approved. Each train hauls about 3 million gallons of crude oil in 100 tanker cars. Between 11 and 16 trains pass through rural and suburban areas of Thurston and Pierce counties every week, according to reports from BNSF Railway.

Participants in Friday’s meeting included elected officials from across the state along with Oregon and Canada.

“It is clear that we have to take significant action including being better prepared to handle an oil train explosion or large scale spill,” Inslee said.

Although the federal government is the main regulator of the railroads, Inslee said there are some actions the state can take now, such as lowering speed limits of the trains.

“We don’t want vehicles speeding through school zones, and we shouldn’t let oil trains speed through Washington cities,” said Inslee, noting that changes in state permits are at least a year away.

Friday’s meeting included a detailed report on the coal industry by Tom Sanzillo, finance director of the Institute for Energy Economic and Financial Analysis. Sanzillo encouraged states and cities to keep putting pressure on the coal industry, which has seen demand and prices decline worldwide in the past few years.

“The U.S. coal industry is shrinking,” said Sanzillo, adding that the industry needs “robust growth” to meet its potential and compete in the global market despite record demand for coal by nations like China. “Hooking your wagon to the coal industry is not a particularly promising outlook right now.”

At the local level, Olympia Mayor Stephen Buxbaum said the City Council will seek a resolution next week to add Olympia to the list of cities that oppose the increase in crude oil transport.

“We are at a crossroads,” Buxbaum said Friday. “We could see up to 60 trains a day and 4,000 supertankers in our waters.”

As for the coal issue, Buxbaum recently co-authored a guest column titled “You might be surprised by Puget Sound Energy’s coal power supply” that ran Nov. 19 in The Seattle Times. Also signing the article were Bainbridge Island Mayor Anne Blair and Mercer Island Mayor Bruce Bassett, and all three mayors’ respective city councils endorsed it.

The article urges Puget Sound Energy to take immediate action and plan for a “post-coal future.” About one-third of PSE’s power supply comes from coal that’s shipped from out of state, according to the article. The mayors also cite Gov. Inslee’s recent executive order to reduce pollution and transition away from coal power.

“The bottom line is that we don’t need coal,” the article states. “The potential is there for Washington to meet its energy needs with efficiency programs, wind, solar and other technologies. We just need to rise to the occasion.”

 

Crude By Rail, Emergency Readiness & Response, Massive increase in crude-by-rail, Rail Safety

Seattle: More than 750 turn out for meeting on oil-train study

Repost from The Seattle Times

More than 750 people turn out for meeting on oil-train study

Hundreds of people concerned about the increasing number of oil trains traversing the state came to a Thursday evening meeting in Olympia to comment on the preliminary findings of a state study on oil-train safety and spill response.
By Hal Bernton, October 30, 2014

State officials are proposing more funding and more regulatory authority to step up oversight of the surging numbers of oil trains carrying crude through Washington, and to better prepare for any possible spills.

The proposals are included in the preliminary findings of a state Department of Ecology study, which was reviewed at a Thursday evening meeting that drew more than 750 people, the vast majority of whom are opposed to increased oil train traffic in the state.

The report — in an interim form — is scheduled to be delivered to Gov. Jay Inslee in December. The draft findings already are spurring state agencies to prepare legislation, according to Lisa Copeland, a Department of Ecology spokeswoman.

The report includes a dozen measures that could be taken up by the Legislature to try to improve safety and spill response. They include modifying the railroad regulatory-fee structure so that more rail inspectors are hired, providing new state authority to monitor the safety of rail crossings on private roads and launching a new state grant program to finance firefighting equipment.

The report is being prepared by a team of consultants along with the state Ecology Department, Utilities and Transportation Commission and other state agencies. It examines the public health, safety and environmental risks posed by the movement of crude oil by rail as well as by vessel through Washington waters.

The oil trains moving through Washington reflect a fundamental shift in sourcing of Pacific Northwest oil as Alaska North Slope crude production declines and the Bakken fields of North Dakota boom.

In 2011, almost no oil trains traversed Washington.

Now, state officials say, some 19 trains carry crude across the state each week. Over a year’s time, those trains move some 2.87 billion gallons of oil. After they unload their crude, some of the Bakken oil is transported by tug and barge to Puget Sound-area refineries

In the aftermath of a July 6, 2013, oil-train derailment and explosion in Canada that killed 47 people, crude trains have raised public concern and prompted state officials in Washington and elsewhere to increase scrutiny of such trains.

There were eight other “notable crude oil derailments” in North America in 2013 and 2014, and the report says that Bakken crude “may present significant risks with respect to public safety due to its higher volatility and flammability.”

By 2020, in Washington, the crude-oil traffic through the state could more than triple to 59 trains a week if expansion plans for terminals are actually completed,

“We felt it was important to lay out what is in the realm of the possible, “ said Scott Ferguson, a Department of Ecology official who has assisted with the report.

The increasing numbers of oil trains have caused plenty of unease to roil through the state. Some 200 people signed up to speak Thursday evening, and Department of Ecology officials listened to hours of passionate testimony from people upset about tanker cars filled with crude.

Those who testified spoke about the potential for spills that could foul tribal fisheries in the Columbia River, drinking water aquifers for Olympia and sensitive coastal waters near Bellingham.

They talked about the potential for exploding tanker cars that would kill people living in a “blast zone” along the rail lines.

Many were veterans of the movement to try to block development of coal terminals in Washington state, wearing red shirts that declared “Power Past Coal.” They frequently waved signs that declared oil and coal are bad for Washington.

“Our state is at a crossroads with proposed increases in crude oil and coal transportation, testified Kathryn Chudy, a therapist who lives in Vancouver, Wash. “Adding more crude oil and coal trains to this risk jeopardizes their safety, and can in no way be justified.”

Frank Gordon, a Grays Harbor County Commissioner, fears what an oil spill would do to the salmon runs in his area and said he opposes a proposal to develop a new oil terminal at Hoquiam.

“We don’t need oil trains coming to Grays Harbor. It’s just not worthwhile,” Gordon said.

Gus Melonas, a BNSF spokesman, in an interview before the hearing, said that BNSF has a strong safety record in transporting crude oil by rail.

He said that BNSF has assisted with firefighter training and taken other steps to improve safety. To help reduce the risks of a derailments, for example, the crude oil trains move at speeds of less than 20 miles an hour through Seattle and Vancouver, Wash.

“We have invested nearly $500 million in the past three years in track upgrades in Washington,” Melonas said

BNSF also is focusing on crew compliance with railway rules, as well as inspections to improve safety as trains move along the rails.

“As a common carrier we are obligated to move all types of freight,” Melonas said. “We don’t control what we haul, but we control how we haul it.”

Alon USA Energy, Bakersfield CA, Crude By Rail

Oil-by-rail project for shut California refinery near approval

Repost from Reuters
[Editor: Significant quote: “…proposals have faced lengthy delays for comprehensive environmental reviews, public input, and revisions.  Valero Energy Corp, the largest U.S. refiner, postponed its plans to send crude by rail to its San Francisco-area refinery because of such delays, and withdrew permit applications for a similar project at its Los Angeles plant….’I think Bakersfield is probably the best place to build a rail facility in California, because it’s not sitting in San Francisco or LA, and it has access to pipes going north and south. It just seems like it’s going to be a struggle to develop rail in other locations,’ Plains’ Chief Operating Officer Harry Pefanis told analysts in May.”  – RS]

Oil-by-rail project for shut California refinery near approval

Kristen Hays, August 15 2014

(Reuters) – The first new crude-by-rail project at a California refinery is likely to win approval next month after more than a year of scrutiny, the head of the Kern County planning division told Reuters, and it could help reopen the shuttered plant.

The facility at independent refiner Alon USA Energy Inc’s Bakersfield plant would increase crude offloading capacity to 140,000 barrels per day from its current 13,000 bpd and open up significant access to cheaper inland U.S. and Canadian crudes.

Alon’s Bakersfield plant is in Kern County, home to about 65 percent of all California oil production, where crude has been produced for more than a century.

Alon shut the 70,000 bpd Bakersfield refinery in late 2012 because its reliance on more expensive imports and lack of access to other crudes without significant rail rendered the plant unprofitable.

Other California refiners also struggle with profitability because of reliance on expensive imported crude and costly fuel manufacturing regulations in the biggest gasoline market in the country.

“We’re supportive of what Alon is doing with this refinery,” said Lorelei Oviatt, director of the county’s planning and community development department. “This refinery is not operating at full capacity. We would like to see this refinery operating at full capacity.”

Alon didn’t respond to requests for comment.

The Alon project is among several proposed at California refineries, some of which face growing opposition in light of a spate of crude train crashes in the past year as the U.S. oil boom sent amounts of crude moving by train soaring.

The worst by far was in Quebec in July last year when a runaway crude train exploded in the town of Lac-Megantic, killing 47 people.

Several California refiners, largely isolated by the Rocky Mountains from the growing cheap bounty from oilfields in Texas, North Dakota and Canada, want to tap those sources via rail because no major pipelines carry crude from those areas into the Golden State, nor are any planned.

More than half of the 1.7 million barrels of crude processed by California refiners each day is imported.

But proposals have faced lengthy delays for comprehensive environmental reviews, public input, and revisions.

Valero Energy Corp, the largest U.S. refiner, postponed its plans to send crude by rail to its San Francisco-area refinery because of such delays, and withdrew permit applications for a similar project at its Los Angeles plant.

Kinder Morgan Energy Partners operates the state’s most substantial oil-by-rail facility at a terminal in Richmond, which handles up to 72,000 bpd. Local planners last year approved, without an environmental review, a revised ethanol offloading permit to allow the terminal to handle crude. But opponents are suing to temporarily shut it down and force that kind of review.

Tesoro Corp faces similar growing opposition for a 360,000-bpd railport project in southwest Washington state that could ship crude to California refineries by tanker.

That could let California refiners – which includes Tesoro’s Los Angeles-area plant – replace more than 40 percent of more expensive imported oil with North American crudes if all of it were shipped to the state.

Alon is considering possibly leaving the Bakersfield refinery shut and running the facility as a rail and logistics terminal.

If the refinery remains shut, the rail operation would be similar to a separate 70,000-bpd oil-by-rail facility Plains All American plans to open in October and eventually expand to 140,000 bpd. That project was approved two years ago before it was acquired by Plains.

Alon bought the Bakersfield plant out of bankruptcy in 2010 from Flying J Inc, which had shut it in early 2009 shortly after seeking bankruptcy protection. Alon restarted the hydrocracker in the summer of 2011, but operational problems led to more shutdowns and startups.

David Hackett, president of Stillwater Associates, a refining consultancy in Irvine, California, said the refinery’s spotty operational history may better support a future as a rail hub.

“They haven’t run it as a refinery in a long time. I don’t think they’ll restart Bakersfield, and I don’t understand why they didn’t pull this off two years ago,” he said.

ESTABLISHED OIL HUB

Bakersfield sits in the center of the state’s oil production where the oil industry is long established. Plains executives have said its crude-friendly climate and existing infrastructure make the area more attractive for such projects.

“I think Bakersfield is probably the best place to build a rail facility in California, because it’s not sitting in San Francisco or LA, and it has access to pipes going north and south. It just seems like it’s going to be a struggle to develop rail in other locations,” Plains’ Chief Operating Officer Harry Pefanis told analysts in May.

Alon had hoped to have its Bakersfield rail project up and running by the end of 2013, but it, like others in the state, underwent a lengthy environmental review and public comment.

Oviatt said the Kern County planning department had considered all issues during that review, including safety and spill preparedness.

Now the project is slated to go before the county’s board of supervisors for a vote at a Sept. 9 public hearing. Oviatt, who is not one of the five members of the board, said she expected a final decision at that time.

The planning department has signed off on it, and Oviatt said the board tended to be supportive of business.

“I can’t say how the board would vote, but I do believe that given their business-friendly attitude, they’re going to take all of this into serious consideration.”

(Reporting by Kristen Hays in Houston; Editing by Terry Wade, Lisa Shumaker, Jessica Resnick-Ault and Phil Berlowitz)
Crude Oil, Hazmat notification, Washington State

NW states poll: residents support oil trains, but don’t know much about them

Repost from Walowa.com (Walowa County, WA)
[Editor: Significant quote: “Eric de Place, policy director for the Seattle-based think tank Sightline Institute, draws a connection between how much people know about oil trains and how much they support such projects….’What we’ve seen so far is that the more people know about these projects, the less they like them,’ De Place said.”  – RS]

Poll: Most Northwest Residents Support Oil Trains But Don’t Know Much About The Issue

July 9, 2014, Tony Schick, Cassandra Profita, EarthFix

A 56-percent majority of Northwest residents support the transportation of oil by rail to reach West Coast refineries, with the refined oil being used for domestic purposes, according to a new DHM Research poll for EarthFix.

However, a 54-percent majority said they have heard or read little or nothing about oil trains.

The poll surveyed 1,200 residents across the Northwest 400 each in Oregon, Washington and Idaho from June 25-30. The margin of error for each state’s results was 4.9 percent. the three-state regional results had a margin of error of 2.8 percent.

Several oil-by-rail projects across the region have raised safety and environmental concerns, and opponent groups are working to stop some projects from moving forward. Oil train derailments in the U.S. have caused explosions and fires in the past year, and one derailment in Canada killed 47 people.

But most of the Northwest residents polled disagreed with opponents who argue that the risks of transporting oil by rail are too high. Only 32 percent of respondents agreed that oil-by-rail shipments should be stopped to protect public safety and the environment. Fifty-three percent of respondents said they disagreed and 15 percent said they don’t know.

John Horvick, vice president and director of research for DHM, said the poll shows the most people aren’t opposed to the idea of oil trains.

“At least, they’re not opposed,” he said. “I don’t know that there’s a ton of enthusiasm necessarily.”

A majority of respondents 66 percent said railroads have good safety records and will do their best to prevent accidents and spills when transporting oil by train.

“For the most part, people overwhelmingly thought the railroads can be trusted to handle this,” Horvick said.

Statistically speaking, major derailments or collisions on railroads are rare. But a recent EarthFix story revealed many within the railroad industry have concerns about railroads’ commitments to safety.

Most people polled said they hold businesses in the oil industry as well as elected officials and governments responsible for preventing oil train accidents and spills. While 88 percent said businesses in the oil industry need to prevent accidents and spills, 73 percent said elected officials and others in government need to prevent accidents and spills.

At the Port of St. Helens industrial park in Clatskanie, Oregon — the most frequent destination for oil trains through Oregon accepting three per week — terminal owner Global Partners has announced it will only accept oil in newer model tank cars with added armor. The vast majority of tank cars in use today are an older model long known to be prone to punctures.

Patrick Trapp, executive director at the Port of St. Helens, said the crude by rail project as helped the port maintain roughly 50 jobs, a significant number for Columbia County, and carries the potential for 30 more. He also said the port favors handling domestic oil headed to a West Coast refinery.

“This is their business — they want it to be done safely. They expect it to be done safely,” Trapp said. “I can’t speak for other projects across the state or the region, but for our area here it’s been going on for about a year and a half now and they’ve been doing it very responsibly, very methodically.”

DHM Research poll results also show many people in the Northwest aren’t following the issue of oil train safety. The survey asked people how much they’ve heard or read about oil trains in their state. Across the region, 27 percent residents said “nothing” while another 27 percent said “not much.”

Horvick said that’s not surprising.

“For most people across the Northwest region, this isn’t something that’s happening in their backyard,” he said. “For many people who aren’t living in communities with trains passing through this may be out of sight, out of mind.”

Eric de Place, policy director for the Seattle-based think tank Sightline Institute, draws a connection between how much people know about oil trains and how much they support such projects.

“What we’ve seen so far is that the more people know about these projects, the less they like them,” De Place said. He said public opinion polls he’s seen tend to show support wanes as the public becomes more informed. “Right now we’re still in a place where most people haven’t heard of the projects or don’t really understand the dynamics around them.”

The Sightline Institute has examined crude by rail extensively in the Northwest, and has been critical of many projects. An analysis by the institute in May showed the Northwest averages nine freight train derailments per month, most of them minor.

De Place pointed out that survey respondents specifically supported crude by rail if the oil is being used for domestic purposes, which may not be the case once it reaches refineries. Crude oil exports have been banned for 40 years, but many in Congress have been calling for an end to the ban, which was recently loosened. In 2011, the U.S. exported more petroleum product such as gasoline and diesel than it imported for the first time since 1949.

The poll also found more people support restricting information about oil train routes to regulators and first responders rather than releasing it to the public.

That information became the subject of a transparency debate after the U.S. Department of Transportation ordered railroads to provide it to states. Railroads then asked states for nondisclosure agreements. Oregon and Washington both eventually made the information available free of charge after receiving several public records requests. Some states remain undecided.

When asked whether the public should know for the safety of the community when oil is being shipped on trains through their area, only 34 percent of residents said yes. When asked if only regulators and first responders should know when oil is being shipped on trains through their area to prevent possible attacks, 47 percent of respondents said yes.

Horvick said those results did surprise him.

“I would have thought it would have been the reverse,” he said. “”When we do polling on any number of issues that get at the question of transparency and information to the public, the default position for people tends to be the more information the better. That my government shouldn’t hide or prevent me from knowing anything. … But at least framed up this way they’re willing to withhold some information if it is to prevent a possible attack.”

Support for oil trains was a little higher in Idaho at 64 percent compared with 59 percent support in Oregon and 53 percent support in Washington. Overall, 21 percent of those polled said they don’t know whether they support or oppose the idea of shipping oil by rail.

Earthfix Survey Oil Trains by State June 2014.  This story originally appeared through the EarthFix public media collaboration.