Tag Archives: West Virginia

Bakken Crude, Benicia CA, Bridge safety, California, Crude By Rail, Derailment, Emergency Readiness & Response, Explosion, Fire, Hazmat notification, Massive increase in crude-by-rail, Oil Industry, Oil prices, Rail inspection, Valero Benicia Refinery, Valero Crude By Rail, Volatility

Crude oil train shipments dwindle in California, for now

Repost from The Sacramento Bee

Crude oil train shipments dwindle in California, for now

By Tony Bizjak, 03/11/2015 9:47 PM
A BNSF train carries Bakken crude oil in the hills outside the Feather River Canyon last June.
A BNSF train carries Bakken crude oil in the hills outside the Feather River Canyon last June. Jake Miille / Special to The Bee

A year ago, California officials nervously braced for an influx of milelong trains carrying volatile crude oil to refineries in the Valley and on the coast – trains similar to the one that exploded two years ago in Canada, killing 47 people.

The trains never arrived. Although tank cars full of oil now roll daily through cities in the Midwest and East, provoking fears of crashes and fires, the number of oil trains entering California has remained surprisingly low, state safety regulators say, no more than a handful a month. In recent weeks, they appear to have dwindled to almost nothing.

The reasons appear to be mainly economic.

“Crude oil shipments from out of state have virtually stopped,” said Paul King, rail safety chief at the California Public Utilities Commission. “Our information is that no crude oil trains are expected for the rest of this month.”

Most notably, the BNSF Railway recently stopped running a 100-car train of volatile oil from the Bakken region of North Dakota through the Feather River Canyon and midtown Sacramento to the Bay Area. The trains, several a month, carried an estimated 3 million gallons of fuel each.

Bakken oil, a lighter type of crude, similar to gasoline, has gained a fearsome reputation since it entered the national scene a few years ago. A string of Bakken train explosions around the country prompted the federal government to issue a warning last year about the oil’s unusual volatility and launch efforts to write stiffer regulations on rail transport, including a proposal to require sturdier tank cars for oil.

Two more Bakken train derailments and explosive fires recently in West Virginia and Illinois triggered a new round of complaints that the federal government is dragging its heels in finalizing those regulations.

The BNSF train through Sacramento was believed to be the only train in California carrying 100 cars of Bakken oil. PUC rail safety deputy director King said his commission’s rail monitors have been told by owners of a Richmond oil transfer station in the Bay Area that refiners stopped the shipments in November as global oil prices dropped.

California Energy Commission fuels specialist Gordon Schremp said lower prices for other types of oil have made Bakken marginally less marketable in California, although that could easily change in the future.

Other projects, like a Valero Refining Co. plan to run two 50-car oil trains daily through Sacramento beginning this spring to its Benicia plant, have not yet gotten off the ground, in part because of political opposition. Under pressure from state officials, including Attorney General Kamala Harris, Benicia recently announced it is redoing part of its environmental and risk analysis of the Valero rail project. Valero has said it intends to ship lighter fuels, but has declined to say whether those will be Bakken.

State safety officials said the slowdown provides a bit more time to provide hazardous-materials training for more firefighters, as well as to put together a state rail-bridge inspection program and to upgrade disaster and waterway spill preparedness. But state officials said they still feel like they’re playing catch-up as they prepare for existing and future potential rail hazards.

“This apparent reprieve may seem helpful, but we still have substantial amounts of … hazardous materials traveling across California’s rail lines,” said Kelly Huston, deputy director of the state Office of Emergency Services. “It only takes one train to create a major disaster.”

Oil prices have begun rising again, and state officials say they expect Bakken shipments to Richmond and potentially elsewhere to be back on track at some point. “We don’t have any concrete info about when it will resume,” the PUC’s King said. “When prices come up, it is likely to resume, and that could be in months.”

Federal emergency rules require railroads to report to states when they run trains carrying more than 1 million gallons of Bakken crude, and then again when that amount changes by 25 percent or more. BNSF sent the state Office of Emergency Services a brief notice on Wednesday acknowledging it had not shipped more than 1 million gallons of Bakken on any train in the last week. The notice does not say how long ago the shipments stopped or when they may resume.

BNSF officials have contended in letters to the state that shipping information is proprietary and should be kept secret. A BNSF spokeswoman declined this week to discuss shipments with The Sacramento Bee, writing in an email, “Information regarding hazardous material shipments is only provided to emergency responders.”

King of the PUC said his monitors estimate that eight or more non-Bakken crude oil trains had been entering the state monthly from Canadian and Colorado oil fields recently, headed to refineries or transfer stations. The Canadian oil, called tar sands, is not considered as explosive as Bakken, but two tar-sands trains derailed and exploded in recent weeks in Ontario, creating fires that lasted several days.

The national concern about crude oil rail shipments follows a boom in domestic oil production, notably in North Dakota, where hydraulic-fracturing advances have freed up immense deposits of shale oil. Lacking pipeline access, North Dakota companies have turned to trains to ship the oil mainly to East and Gulf Coast refineries and to Washington state. Crude by rail shipments in the United States skyrocketed from 9,500 carloads in 2008 to 436,000 in 2013, according to congressional data.

California continues to produce a sizable amount of its own oil in Kern County and receives marine shipments from Alaska and foreign sources. Still, a recent state energy-needs analysis estimates the state could receive as much as 23 percent of its oil via train or barge from continental sources, including North Dakota, Canada, Texas and other Western states, in the coming years. That estimate is based on plans by refineries in Benicia, San Luis Obispo and Kern County to build rail facilities that can accommodate large crude transports.

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

String of ‘Bomb Train’ Explosions in the US and Canada Casts Doubt On Proposed Safety Upgrades

Repost from VICE News

String of ‘Bomb Train’ Explosions in the US and Canada Casts Doubt On Proposed Safety Upgrades

By Peter Rugh, March 11, 2015 | 11:55 am

explosionOver the last half-decade, North American oil by rail transports have exploded. Literally.

Driven by oil booms in Alberta, Canada’s boreal forest and in the Bakken Shale formation in North Dakota, the amount of oil hauled over the nation’s rail system has surged to more than a million barrels a day.

But the number of fiery derailments has also spiked. There were 38 derailments involving fires and ruptures on the rails in 2014, up from 20 in 2009, even as the total number of accidents declined by 21 percent over the same period.

US regulators are drawing up new rules governing crude by rail shipments that will likely be released this spring. But a fresh series of explosions on the tracks might prove their approach too limited.

“We keep seeing exploding bomb trains on different rail carriers, going different speeds, with different rail cars, with different kinds of oil,” said Eric De Place with the Sightline Institute, a non-profit environmental watchdog group. “The fundamentals here are that the whole enterprise is unsafe. I don’t know how much more clearly the universe could underscore that point.”

Last Saturday, first responders in Galena, Illinois battled flames from a five-car explosion near the Wisconsin border. Eight hundred miles away, in Gogama, Ontario, seven tanker cars caught fire — the second crude train to explode in the Canadian province since February 14th. On February 17th, in West Virginia, a 19-car crude explosion blackened the sky above the town of Mount Carbon. Each of these derailments — and others in Casselton, North Dakota and Lynchburg, Virginia — has left widespread destruction and environmental damage in their wake. In Lac-Mégantic, Quebec in 2013 an oil train went off the rails, exploded, and killed 47 people.

‘The proposed rules are almost laughably inadequate.’

Last July, the US Department of Transportation (DOT) announced it was preparing new rules governing crude shipments in order to address growing concern about the safety and environmental impact of the boom in oil by rail shipments. Publically at least, the announcement was met with applause by both the oil industry and railroads.

“Our safety goal is zero incidents,” Brian Straessle, a spokesperson for the American Petroleum Institute (API) and a former aide to Congressman Tom Price, a Republican representing Georgia, told VICE News. “Reaching that goal will require meaningful improvements to safety that are guided by science and data as part of a comprehensive approach to better prevent, mitigate, and respond to accidents.”

“API supports upgrades to the tank car fleet beyond current designs,” Straessle added.

But the draft DOT regulations would only impact a specific type of oil, crude from the Bakken shale region of North Dakota. And they focus on retrofitting or phasing out older model DOT-111 cars from Bakken crude transports.

But, unlike previous derailments, which sparked DOTs drive for safety improvements, the trains that burst into flames in Ontario recently were carrying heavy tar sands bitumen, less flammable than Bakken crude — but flammable nonetheless. In its draft rules, the DOT estimates “about 23,000 cars will be transferred to Alberta tar sands service” as a result of the new regulations and it “expects no cars will be retired.” The Canadian government is also implementing crude by rail reforms that are expected to harmonize with those of the US.
In all four derailments since February 14th, as well as the wreck in Lynchburg, newer or retrofitted cars, touted by the industry as safer were involved. These cars, known as Casualty Prevention Circular-1232s (CPC-1232s) already meet one of the possible design specifications the DOT is considering mandating for Bakken transports.

In other words: the type of cars diminish the risk of explosion and rupture have proven to be inadequate.

The railroad industry previously began standardizing the CPC-1232 design, which can apply to a range of car models, voluntarily in 2011. The CPC-1232 standard allows for exposed valves on the bottom of the tankers that often get severed during derailments, spilling fuel, as has often been the case with legacy DOT-111s.

Additionally, the shell casing on older DOT-111s, a key factor in whether the cars will explode, is 7/16 of an inch thick; on CPC-1232s it is a sixteenth of an inch thicker. The DOT is considering another option: mandating 9/16-inch shells. The thicker the shell, however, the less oil fits in each tanker, cutting profits for shippers who have challenged this aspect of the rules proposal.

Still, the American Association of Railroads (AAR), which introduced the CPC-1232 standard, claims, like the API, it is open to reform.

“The freight rail industry has been calling for tougher tank car standards for years and wants all tank cars carrying crude oil, including the CPC-1232, to be upgraded by retrofitting or taken out of service,” AAR spokesman, Ed Greenberg, told VICE News. “AAR believes every tank car carrying crude oil today needs to be upgraded and made safer, and we support an aggressive retrofit or replacement program.”

Related: Video footage shows massive explosion after West Virginia ‘bomb train’ derailment

But De Place doesn’t think any of the DOT’s proposed regulations will do much good.

“The proposed rules are almost laughably inadequate,” he said. “If American lives weren’t at stake, I would take it as comic relief. What they are proposing are very modest tweaks to the existing system and a long phase-out period that will allow the industry to run even the most dangerous cars for years to come.”

Under the DOT’s current proposal, older DOT-111s carrying Bakken crude won’t be ordered off the rails until October 2017.

De Place insists there’s a simpler, safer solution. “The government should issue an emergency order suspending the transport of crude oil immediately,” he said. “Anything short of that is playing Russian Roulette.”

The DOT did not respond to a request for comment from VICE News.

Bakken Crude, Derailment, Diluted bitumen (Dilbit), Emergency Readiness & Response, Evacuation zone, Explosion, Federal Regulation (U.S.), Fire, Massive increase in crude-by-rail, Moratorium, Rivers, Tar sands crude, Volatile gases, Wildlife

Fourth Oil Train Accident in Three Weeks Shows Need for Immediate Moratorium

Repost from The Center for Biological Diversity

Another Oil Train Derails and Catches Fire in Ontario

Fourth Oil Train Accident in Three Weeks Shows Need for Immediate Moratorium

Center for Biological DiversityGOGAMA, Ont.— An oil train derailed and caught fire early this morning in Ontario near the town of Gogama, the second such incident in Ontario in three weeks, and the fourth oil train wreck in North America in the same time period. Since Feb. 14, there have also been fiery oil train derailments in West Virginia and Illinois. The Illinois wreck occurred just two days ago, and the fire from that incident is still burning.

“Before one more derailment, fire, oil spill and one more life lost, we need a moratorium on oil trains and we need it now” said Mollie Matteson, a senior scientist with the Center for Biological Diversity. “The oil and railroad industries are playing Russian roulette with people’s lives and our environment, and the Obama administration needs to put a stop to it.”

In the United States, some 25 million people live within the one-mile “evacuation zone” of tracks carrying oil trains. In July 2013, a fiery oil train derailment in Quebec resulted in the loss of 47 lives and more than a million gallons of oil spilled into a nearby lake. A report recently released by the Center for Biological Diversity also found that oil trains threaten vital wildlife habitat; oil trains pass through 34 wildlife refuges and critical habitat for 57 endangered species.

Today’s Ontario accident joins an ever-growing list of devastating oil train derailments over the past two years. Oil transport has increased from virtually nothing in 2008 to more than 500,000 rail cars. Billions of gallons of oil pass through towns and cities ill-equipped to respond to the kinds of explosions and spills that have been occurring. Millions of gallons of crude oil have been spilled into waterways. In 2014, a record number of spills from oil trains occurred.

There has been a more than 40-fold increase in crude oil transport by rail since 2008, but no significant upgrade in federal safety requirements. The oil and rail industries have lobbied strongly against new safety regulations that would help lessen the danger of mile-long trains carrying highly flammable crude oils to refineries and ports around the continent. The Obama administration recently delayed for several months the approval of proposed safety rules for oil trains. The proposed rules fall short because they fail to require appropriate speed limitations, and it will be at least another two and a half years before the most dangerous tank cars are phased out of use for the most hazardous cargos. The oil and railroad industries have lobbied for weaker rules on tank car safety and brake requirements.

The administration also declined to set national regulations on the level of volatile gases in crude oil transported by rail, instead deciding to leave that regulation to the state of North Dakota, where most of the so-called “Bakken” crude originates. Bakken crude oil has been shown to have extremely high levels of volatile components such as propane and butane but the oil industry has balked at stripping out these components because the process is expensive and these “light ends” in the oil bring a greater profit. The North Dakota rules, which go into effect next month, set the level of volatile gases allowed in Bakken crude at a higher level than was found in the crude that set the town of Lac Mégantic, Quebec on fire in 2013, or that blew up in the derailment that occurred last month in West Virginia.

The crude involved in today’s accident may be another form of flammable crude, called diluted bitumen, originating in Alberta’s tar sands region. The Feb. 14 derailment and fire in Ontario on the same rail line involved an oil train hauling bitumen, otherwise known as tar sands.

“Today we have another oil train wreck in Canada, while the derailed oil train in Illinois is still smoldering. Where’s it going to happen next? Chicago? Seattle?” said Matteson. “The Obama administration has the power to put an end to this madness and it needs to act now because quite literally, people’s lives are on the line.”

In addition to its report on oil trains, the Center has sued for updated oil spill response plans, petitioned for oil trains that include far fewer tank cars and for comprehensive oil spill response plans for railroads as well as other important federal reforms, and is also pushing to stop the expansion of projects that will facilitate further increases in crude by rail.

The Center for Biological Diversity is a national, nonprofit conservation organization with more than 825,000 members and online activists dedicated to the protection of endangered species and wild places.

Bakken Crude, Federal Regulation (U.S.), Hazmat notification, Oil stabilization, Rail infrastructure, Rail inspection, Tank car design, Train speed

Dems to Obama: Use Powers to Crack Down on Oil Rail Transportation

Repost from The PJ Tatler

Dems to Obama: Use Powers to Crack Down on Oil Rail Transportation

By Bridget Johnson, March 9, 2015 – 2:50 pm

Wisconsin Democrats are urging President Obama to explore using his executive authority to take “immediate” action against “dangerous” trains transporting oil from hugely successful production areas in North Dakota.

Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) and Rep. Ron Kind (D-Wis.) noted that the Obama administration missed a Jan. 15 deadline to release final Department of Transportation and the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration rules on oil train accidents.

“We write to you today with deep concerns about the risk that trains carrying crude oil continue to pose to our constituents.  Oil train accidents are increasing at an alarming rate as a result of the increased oil production from the Bakken formation in North Dakota. Congress has provided additional funding to study safer tank cars, hire more track inspectors, and repair rail infrastructure. We urge your Administration to use this funding, along with its regulatory powers, to improve oil train safety as quickly as possible,” Baldwin and Kind wrote to Obama today.

“…It is time for you to take immediate action and we request that your Administration issue final rules without further delay. We believe that recent accidents make clear the need for rules stronger than those originally proposed.”

Baldwin and Kind said that the primary risk is crumbling rail infrastructure, including not enough Federal Railroad Administration inspections and old bridges.

“The danger facing Wisconsin communities located near rail lanes has materialized quickly. Just a few years ago, an oil train in the state was a rare sight. Today, more than 40 oil trains a week pass through Wisconsin cities and towns, many more than 100 tank cars long,” the lawmakers wrote. “It is clear that the increase in oil moving on the rails has corresponded with an uptick in oil train derailments. In addition to the derailment in Illinois on Thursday March 5, 2015, there have been derailments in North Dakota, Virginia, Alabama, West Virginia, and a fatal explosion in Lac-Megantic, Quebec.”

“These catastrophes have illuminated the many areas ripe for improvement, as well as additional measures needed to be taken in order to ensure safety when transporting crude oil by train.”

They want new regulations for the stabilization of oil to make crude “less likely to ignite,” new safety requirements for tank cars, new speed limits for oil trains, and “increased transparency” about oil shipments as “it is also important that our communities are aware of what is being shipped in their backyard.”

Supporters of the Keystone XL pipeline have noted the need for a comprehensive energy infrastructure that involves rail and roads, though Baldwin voted against the pipeline in January.

Baldwin sought amendments requiring that tar sands producers pay into the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund, and guarantees that American consumers get the Keystone oil before foreign export markets.

“Working with Canada we can achieve true North American energy security and also help our allies,” sponsor Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.) said then. “For us to continue to produce more energy and compete in the global market we need more pipelines to move crude at the lowest cost and in the safest and most environmentally friendly way. That means that pipelines like the Keystone XL are in the vital national interest of our country.”