Category Archives: Bakken Crude

Bakken Crude, Canadian regulation, Crude By Rail, DOT-111, Federal Regulation (U.S.), Tank car design

U.S. lags in dealing with danger of oil tank cars

Repost from CentralMaine.com

OUR OPINION: US lags in dealing with danger of oil tank cars

Federal foot-dragging could lead to a Lac-Megantic-type tragedy in this country.
August 20, 2014

A major milestone was reached this week in the follow-up to the oil train explosion that killed 47 people last summer in Lac-Megantic, Quebec: Canadian investigators released a final report blaming lax government oversight and poor rail company safety practices for the tragic accident.

But although the Canadian government obviously didn’t fulfill its regulatory responsibilities, Canada is still way ahead of the United States in taking steps to prevent another such tragedy. Canada has banned the most decrepit tank cars; Washington, meanwhile, is calling for a drawn-out retirement and retrofitting process that could keep some of the cars in service until at least 2017. This reluctance to take action is putting U.S. communities so far down the track in terms of improved public safety that they’re almost guaranteed to be left behind.

The train that crashed in Quebec in July 2013 was carrying nearly 2 million gallons of volatile North Dakota crude oil in DOT-111 tanker cars. When derailed, DOT-111 cars are easily punctured or ruptured, making them highly vulnerable to leaks and explosions. The cars’ flaws were first noted in a National Transportation Safety Board study more than 20 years ago. And in 2012, the NTSB concluded that the DOT-111s’ “inadequate design” contributed to the severity of a 2009 oil train derailment in Illinois that killed one person and injured several others. Because of a spike in U.S. crude oil production, moreover, the number of oil car accidents continues to climb: 116 in 2013, more than double the number of all episodes from 1990 to 2009.

Nonetheless, about 98,000 tank cars are in service — and most don’t have the latest safety features. All 72 cars in the Quebec runaway train, for example, were built to the older standard. So any of the major cities through which this train passed before reaching Lac-Megantic — including Minneapolis, Milwaukee, Chicago and Detroit — could have been the site of an equally devastating derailment, spill and explosion.

In April, Canada barred 5,000 of the most poorly made, puncture-prone DOT-111s from carrying crude oil and ethanol. But such cars will stay in service in the United States until at least 2017, under proposed regulations that call for a two-year phase-out of the cars, effective September 2015, unless they’re retrofitted to comply with new safety standards.

Announced last month by the federal Department of Transportation, the rules would apply only to “high-hazard flammable trains” that carry at least 20 cars of volatile liquids. DOT-111s that haven’t been retrofitted still could be used beyond 2015 on trains with 19 or fewer tank cars — a massive loophole.

The U.S. DOT realizes it’s dangerous to keep shipping volatile crude in substandard rail cars. The agency even said as much in the news release announcing the proposal: “The safety risk presented by transporting Bakken (North Dakota) crude oil by rail is magnified both by an increasing volume of Bakken being shipped … throughout the U.S. and the large distances over which the product is shipped.”

To have this knowledge and still fail to act on it is to take a cynical view of the well-being of the people whom the agency is supposed to be protecting — and it gives public service a bad name.

Bakken Crude, Canadian regulation, Crude By Rail, Derailment, Explosion, Lac-Mégantic, Oil Industry, Rail industry, Train braking systems

‘Weak safety culture’ faulted in fatal Quebec train derailment, fire

Repost from McClatchy DC
[Editor: This report by Curtis Tate is one of many reports on the Canadian investigation into the Lac-Megantic derailment and explosion.  See also Desmogblog on ‘Cost cutting,’ this CNN report, ’18 Errors‘, and Business Week, ‘Law Firms react.’  – RS]

‘Weak safety culture’ faulted in fatal Quebec train derailment, fire

By Curtis Tate, McClatchy Washington Bureau, August 19, 2014
Aerial view of charred freight train in Lac-Megantic in Quebec, Canada. | TRANSPORTATION SAFETY BOARD OF CANADA

CHICAGO — Canadian safety investigators on Tuesday blamed a “weak safety culture” and inadequate government oversight for a crude oil train derailment last year in Lac-Megantic, Quebec, that killed 47 people.

In its nearly 200-page report, issued more than 13 months after the deadly crash, Canada’s Transportation Safety Board identified 18 contributing factors.

“Take any one of them out of the equation,” said Wendy Tadros, the board’s chairman, “and the accident may not have happened.”

Among other factors, the investigation found that the train’s sole engineer failed to apply a sufficient number of handbrakes after parking the train on a descending grade several miles from Lac-Megantic, and leaving it unattended for the night.

The engineer applied handbrakes to the train’s five locomotives and two other cars, but investigators concluded that he did not set handbrakes on any of the train’s 72 tank cars loaded with 2 million gallons of Bakken crude oil.

Investigators said the engineer should have set at least 17 handbrakes. Instead, he relied on another braking system in the lead locomotive to hold the train in place. But after local residents reported a fire on the locomotive later that night, firefighters shut the locomotive off, following instructions given by another railroad employee.

Not long after, the train began its runaway descent, reaching a top speed of 65 mph. The train derailed in the center of Lac-Megantic at a point where the maximum allowable speed was 15 mph.

Investigators said that the derailment caused 59 of the 63 tank cars that derailed to puncture, releasing 1.6 million gallons of flammable crude oil into the town, much of which burned. In addition to the 47 fatalities, 2,000 people were evacuated, and 40 buildings and 53 vehicles were destroyed.

The train’s engineer and two other railroad employees are set to go on trial next month. But Tadros noted that the investigation revealed “more than handbrakes, or what the engineer did or didn’t do.”

“Experience has taught us that even the most well-trained and motivated employees make mistakes,” she said.

The Quebec derailment set in motion regulatory changes on both sides of the border to improve the safety of trains carrying crude oil. Sixteen major derailments involving either crude oil or ethanol have occurred since 2006, according to the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board.

Tadros said the railroad relied on its employees to follow the rules and that regulators relied on the railroads to enforce their own rules. But she said that a complex system requires more attention to safety.

“It’s not enough for a company to have a safety management system on paper,” she said. “It has to work.”

Bakken Crude, Canadian regulation, Crude By Rail, Lac-Mégantic, Oil Industry, Rail industry, Train braking systems

Report Reveals Cost Cutting Measures At Heart Of Lac-Megantic Oil Train Disaster

Repost from Desmogblog
[Editor: See also this nicely-bulleted summary of the TSB Report: Lac-Mégantic derailment: Anatomy of a disaster, by Kim Mackrael, The Globe and Mail.  – RS]

Report Reveals Cost Cutting Measures At Heart Of Lac-Megantic Oil Train Disaster

2014-08-19, by Justin Mikulka

Today the Transportation Safety Board of Canada (TSB) released its final report on the July 6th, 2013 train derailment in Lac-Megantic, Quebec. The report produced a strong reaction from Keith Stewart, Greenpeace Canada’s Climate and Energy Campaign coordinator.

“This report is a searing indictment of Transport Canada’s failure to protect the public from a company that they knew was cutting corners on safety despite the fact that it was carrying increasing amounts of hazardous cargo. This lax approach to safety has allowed the unsafe transport of oil by rail to continue to grow even after the Lac Megantic disaster. It is time for the federal government to finally put community safety ahead of oil and rail company profits or we will see more tragedies, Stewart said.”

Throughout the report there is ample evidence to support Stewart’s position and plenty to show why the people of Lac-Megantic want the CEO of Montreal, Maine & Atlantic Railway (MMA), the rail company responsible for the accident, held accountable in place of the engineer and other low level employees currently facing charges.

At the press conference for the release of the report the TSB representatives often noted that they had found 18 factors that contributed to the actual crash and they were not willing to assign blame to anyone, claiming that wasn’t their role.

But several critical factors stand out and they are the result of MMA putting profits ahead of safety and Transport Canada (TC), the Canadian regulators responsible for overseeing rail safety, failing to do its job.

Engine Fire

The issue that set the whole chain of events into motion on July 6th was an engine fire in the unattended locomotive. As usual the engineer had left the train unattended with one locomotive running while shutting off the others. This locomotive supplied power to the air braking system. The locomotive caught on fire, the fire department was called and they put out the fire and shut off the locomotive in the process.

Today’s TSB report notes that the fire was due to an improper repair of a cam bearing. Instead of doing a costly replacement, the cam bearing was repaired with epoxy (polymeric material).  As the report states:

This temporary repair had been performed using a polymeric material, which did not have the strength and durability required for this use.

Braking Failure

Once the locomotive was shut down due to the fire, it could no longer power the air brake system.

As previously reported on DeSmogBlog, this type of system has been described as “19th century technology” by a rail safety expert at the Federal Railroad Administration but as a whole the rail industry has not upgraded to newer technologies because of the costs involved.

Without power to the air braking system, the braking system lost pressure over time and the train began to roll towards Lac-Megantic.

This wouldn’t have been an issue if the proper number of handbrakes had been applied. But the engineer had not applied enough handbrakes because he had not performed the hand brake effectiveness test properly and had left the locomotive air brakes on while conducting the test. The report notes the lack of training and oversight for that particular locomotive engineer (LE).

Furthermore, the LE was never tested on the procedures for performing a hand brake effectiveness test, nor did the company’s Operational Tests and Inspections (OTIS) Program confirm that hand brake effectiveness tests were being conducted correctly.

The report also notes that when MMA employees were tested for safety knowledge, they could take the tests home.

Requalification typically consisted of 1 day to complete the exam, and did not always involve classroom training. On many occasions, employees would take the exam home for completion.

However, in this case, there were not even questions on the test on this critical subject.

They did not have questions on the hand brake effectiveness test, the conditions requiring application of more than the minimum number of hand brakes, nor the stipulation that air brakes cannot be relied upon to prevent an undesired movement.

And they found this had been the situation since before the oil trains starting running.

Since 2009, no employee had been tested on CROR 112(b), which targeted the hand brake effectiveness test. In 2012, U.S. employees had been tested twice on that rule; both tests had resulted in a “Failure”.

Single Operator Risks

The report goes into detail about how MMA came to be operating oil trains with only one crew member. And while ultimately the regulators failed, some did raise flags about this. When MMA initially sought to move to single person train operations (SPTO) from the standard two person crew, it was noted that there were significant issues with their operations.

In July 2009, TC expressed a number of concerns that centred on deficiencies in MMA operations, including lack of consultation with employees in doing risk assessments, problems managing equipment, problems with remote-control operations, issues with rules compliance, issues with fatigue management, and a lack of investment in infrastructure maintenance.

Additionally the report notes that Transport Canada’s Quebec office expressed specific concerns in 2010.

TC Quebec Region reiterated its concern about MMA’s suitability as an SPTO candidate.

And yet despite the concerns and MMA’s poor track record, in 2012 they were allowed to start running single crew trains despite TC Quebec still expressing concern.

In February 2012, TC met with MMA and the RAC. TC advised MMA that TC did not approve SPTO. MMA only needed to comply with all applicable rules and regulations. TC Quebec Region remained concerned about the safety of SPTO on MMA.

Unsurprisingly, the additional training for employees who would be operating trains on their own was almost non-existent. And it was focused on the fact that for safety purposes, engineers were allowed to stop the trains and take naps.

The actual SPTO training for several LEs, including the accident LE, consisted of a short briefing in a manager’s office on the need to report to the RTC every 30 minutes, on the allowance for power naps, and on the need to bring the train to a stop to write clearances.

This report is a clear indictment of a system that allows for corporate profit over public safety. However, what also is clear from today’s press conference and from the regulatory situation in the United States is that nothing of significance has changed regarding the movement of oil by rail in the US and Canada.

A poorly maintained locomotive can still be left running and unattended. There still is no formal regulation on how many hand brakes need to be applied to secure a train.

Single person crews are still allowed and Burlington Northern Santa Fe, the company moving the most oil-by-rail in the U.S., is working to implement this as a practice despite the objections of the employees.

In short, the corporate profit before public safety approach is still standard operating procedure. And the oil trains are expected to return to the tracks through Lac-Megantic within a year.


Train tracks where the ill-fated train was parked. (c) Justin Mikulka.

Image Credit: Transportation Safety Board via flickr.

Bakken Crude, Blast zone, Crude By Rail

Calculating percent of residents in danger zone for crude oil train derailment

Repost from The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
[Editor: Someone with better statistician skills than me should verify this: take a look at NRDC’s Derailment Risk Zone Maps for California and do the math.  For instance, the population of Sacramento at risk according to NRDC, (using 2010 figures) is 256,299.  Divide that by the 2010 population of 466,488, and you find that 54.9% (!!) of Sacramento’s population is in the danger zone!  Could this be right?- RS]

PublicSource: 40 percent of Pittsburgh, PA residents in danger zone for crude oil train derailment

By Natasha Khan / PublicSource, August 17, 2014

More than 40 percent of Pittsburgh’s residents live in areas at risk if a train carrying crude oil through the city derails and catches fire, according to a PublicSource analysis.

That number does not include children at 72 K-12 schools inside those areas.

PublicSource created a map using a perimeter of a half-mile on each side of the rail lines known to carry crude oil in the city. A half-mile is the federal evacuation zone recommended for accidents involving crude oil trains.

Pittsburgh’s Office of Emergency Management Services and Homeland Security began doing a risk assessment of the trains after the federal government ordered railroads in May to turn over information about which rail lines carry a million gallons or more of crude oil from North Dakota’s Bakken Shale at a time.

“Nobody really knows that there is an explosive bomb driving through their neighborhood,” said Bill Bartlett of Action United, a Pittsburgh group that advocates on behalf of low- and moderate-income families.

Dubbed “virtual pipelines,” these trains can carry millions of gallons of crude oil in more than 100 tank cars and can be a mile long. Many of them are on their way to Philadelphia refineries carrying increasingly large shipments of Bakken crude from North Dakota.

It’s difficult to know exactly how many trains come through Pittsburgh carrying crude oil because the two major railroads, Norfolk Southern and CSX, don’t identify their routes to the public for security and business reasons.

Crude-by-rail traffic has increased by more than 4,000 percent over the past five years. There have been at least 12 significant derailments involving crude oil in North America since May 2013. Lawmakers and public safety groups are concerned that residents near railroad tracks are exposed to more danger. And officials have said safety regulations aren’t keeping up.

The July 2013 accident in Lac-Megantic, Quebec, was the most devastating in years. A train carrying Bakken crude derailed and exploded, killing 47 people and destroying half the downtown.

And, since January, Pennsylvania has had three derailments involving crude. There were no injuries in any of the accidents.

While hazardous materials have traveled on railroads for years, trains have never carried this much crude oil, much of it Bakken crude, which is more flammable than other types of crude.

Emergency response in Pittsburgh

Raymond DeMichiei, deputy director of Pittsburgh’s office of emergency management and homeland security, said his office decided to do the emergency assessment after receiving information in June from the state that trains carrying more than a million gallons of crude were going through the city.

Mr. DeMichiei said his office didn’t have that information previously.

“We’ll determine if we have enough training, equipment,” Mr. DeMichiei said. “If we don’t have enough, we’ll get more.”

At least six states — Washington, North Dakota, California, Montana, Florida and Virginia — have made information publicly available about the amount of Bakken crude and the routes it is traveling.

Pennsylvania did not.

Mr. DeMichiei wouldn’t comment on how many crude trains come through the city daily, but said he generally sees a train along Route 28 on his way to work in the morning and then another one when he drives home.

“We are aware of the issues and we are working to make everyone as safe as possible,” he said.

Mr. DeMichiei said Pittsburgh doesn’t have a response plan specifically for Bakken crude and the railroads haven’t provided one. If an accident did occur, he said the city would base its response on U.S. Department of Transportation guidelines for accidents involving flammable liquids and establish a danger zone of a half-mile on either side of the track. That danger zone could expand depending on the scope of the accident, he said.

Emergency response officials in major cities and small towns have testified before Congress that responders wouldn’t be prepared to handle a large-scale crude oil disaster like the deadly one in Quebec.

Sixty-five percent of fire departments responsible for hazardous materials response haven’t trained all of their personnel for crude, a member of the International Association of Firefighters told Congress last month.

New York fire officials asked Congress to direct $100 million in emergency funds for a national training program for firefighters to address risks from these trains. The money would be used to train firefighters and to put in place stashes of firefighting foam and equipment, according to McClatchy Newspapers.

Alvin Henderson, chief of Allegheny County Emergency Services, said the rail industry has been very cooperative and first responders in the county are receiving training specific to crude oil.

Mr. Henderson said he’s not “losing any sleep” over crude oil moving through Pittsburgh.

A spokesman for Norfolk Southern said they’ll offer training in Pitcairn this month to first responders so they can get more hands-on experience with rail tank cars, equipment and information about crude oil shipments.

Under a recent voluntary agreement with the DOT, the rail industry committed $5 million for training first responders.

Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto said that, in case of an accident, the city could call on the PA Region 13 Task Force. The task force is an initiative that allows counties to pull resources from the region in an emergency.

Trains rerouted in Missouri

Safety groups have urged railroads to reroute crude oil trains around populous areas.

In St. Louis, a city similar in population size to Pittsburgh, the fire chief and a group of residents said the Union Pacific Railroad has agreed to reroute crude oil trains around their neighborhood, and possibly the entire city.

“We stayed focused on the one issue: Get these trains away from people, get them away from the heart of the city,” said Tim Christian, a member of St. Louis for Safe Trains.

Residents of St. Louis’ Holly Hills neighborhood, where crude oil trains passed daily, held public meetings, lobbied experts and politicians and passed out pamphlets around St. Louis.

“We made just the right amount of noise through the right channels,” Mr. Christian said. “It was community in action and it worked well.”

St. Louis Fire Chief Dennis Jenkerson said he has a “gentlemen’s agreement” with the main railroad operator to reroute the trains around Holly Hills. There is no formal agreement, he said.

“I think they rerouted because of a concerned [citizens] group,” Mr. Jenkerson said.

Mr. Christian said he’s received more than a dozen phone calls from people across the U.S. asking how they can organize to reroute crude trains.