Category Archives: Bakken Crude

Bakken Crude, Crude By Rail, Derailment, Explosion, Federal Regulation (U.S.), Mosier OR, National Transportation Safety Board

NPR: Why Feds Chose Not To Investigate Oil Train Derailment In Columbia Gorge

Repost from OPB.org, Oregon Public Broadcasting
[Editor/Background: Here is the  June 9 letter Senators Wyden and Merkley sent to the NTSB. Here is the NTSB’s full 48-page response. (Or jump to page 1 of the NTSB letter below.)  – RS]

Why Feds Chose Not To Investigate Oil Train Derailment In Columbia Gorge

By Tony Schick OPB/EarthFix | July 7, 2016 4:45 p.m. | Updated: July 8, 2016 9:06 a.m.
A 16-car oil train derailment caused a fire and left a small oil sheen on the Columbia River.
A 16-car oil train derailment caused a fire and left a small oil sheen on the Columbia River. CONRAD WILSON

The National Transportation Safety Board has responded to letter from Oregon’s senators about why it did not investigate last month’s oil train derailment in the Columbia River Gorge, saying its limited staff likely would not have gleaned any new safety recommendations from examining the incident.

The federal agency provided a 50-page response to Oregon Sens. Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley, saying it “recognizes the impact of this accident on your constituents and understands the concerns of those affected.”

The NTSB said it did not send a team to Mosier because the incident involved no injuries or fatalities and because early information gathered from Union Pacific Railroad, first responders and the Federal Railroad Administration “indicated that the circumstances of this accident did not pose any new significant safety issues.”

Specifically, federal investigators have seen tank cars rupture before when carrying flammable liquids. Their response to the Oregon senators included a list of 23 known incidents in North America involving crude oil, ethanol or other flammable liquids.

The NTSB opened an investigation into only nine of those and has not yet closed any, according to data relased in the response.

Wyden said he will be scrutinizing whether the agency needs to increase the size of its investigative staff.

“As I keep working to build support in Congress for my bill, I will also continue to look at ways to improve oil-by-rail safety,” Wyden said. “I find it very disturbing that the NTSB did not appear to have enough resources to send an investigative team to Oregon to more closely examine the Mosier accident.”

Read: NTSB Response to Wyden, Merkley

Page 1 of NTSB-Response-to-Merkley-Wyden-07-05-2016

Page 1 of NTSB-Response-to-Merkley-Wyden-07-05-2016

Contributed to DocumentCloud by Tony Schick of EarthFix
Emergency crews on June 4, 2016, found an oil sheen on the bank of the Columbia River near the site of an oil train derailment and spill in Mosier, Oregon, the day prior. AMELIA TEMPLETON
Bakken Crude, Bomb Trains, Crude By Rail, Derailment, Explosion, Public protest, Take Action

To Stop ‘Bomb Trains,’ I Honeymooned in Jail

Repost from OtherWords (in the Benicia Herald on 7/7/16)

To Stop ‘Bomb Trains,’ I Honeymooned in Jail

With one tiny loose bolt, oil trains can erupt into an inferno, scorching everything for miles.
By Daphne Wysham, July 6, 2016
Daphne Wysham
Daphne Wysham, Institute for Policy Studies associate fellow, and director of the Center for Sustainable Economy’s climate and energy program in Portland, Oregon

It was a few days after my wedding. I was supposed to be honeymooning at a nearby winery with my newly minted husband, celebrating our unlikely marriage at age 55.

Instead, I was sitting on the railroad tracks in the pouring rain. Along with 20 other brave souls, some weeping, some singing, I was facing down a locomotive in a town — Vancouver, Washington — that many fear will be forced to accept the largest oil-by-rail terminal in the country.

Why would anyone do something like that?

Because a few short days before, we’d watched in horror as a mile-long train filled with Bakken crude derailed in Mosier, Oregon and burst into towering flames.

We call these oil trains “bomb trains” because we know, with one tiny loose bolt, they can erupt into an inferno, scorching everything for miles. It happened in Lac-Megantic, Canada in 2013. Forty-seven people were killed in a matter of minutes, the town leveled when a train’s brakes failed.

mosier-train-oil-protest
Mosier oil train protest (Photo: Deva 2016)

In the aftermath of the Mosier derailment, local fire chief Jim Appleton, who was originally unwilling to condemn oil trains, was beginning to sound more and more like one of us: “I think it’s insane” to ship oil by rail, he told a reporter. “Shareholder value doesn’t outweigh the lives and happiness of our community.”

And yet shareholder value is outweighing the lives and happiness of communities all over the world. I live in the “blast zone” less than a mile from tracks that ply this dangerous cargo here in the Pacific Northwest. And millions of people, most of them on the other side of the world, are already feeling the heat.

More bomb trains, after all, mean more climate change. Rising temperatures mean dangerous weather patterns, like the floods that recently killed hundreds in Pakistan and China.

Meanwhile, ExxonMobil, whose scientists knew as early as the 1960s that catastrophic climate change would ensue if they didn’t change course, has invested in climate denial in order to maximize their shareholder value, counting on us to not connect the dots.

I grew up in India. I can see the faces of friends and loved ones on Facebook enduring record heat and flooding there. So if the trains wouldn’t stop coming, I figured, I’d put my body on the line in Vancouver. If I went to jail, I hoped my husband would forgive me for skipping out on our first big date as newlyweds.

The riot police were beginning to gather, and the railroad’s private police were issuing their warnings while hundreds chanted nearby. Not wanting to lose valuables in jail, I gave my wallet, cell phone, and wedding ring to a friend.

Then they hauled us off, one by one, in plastic handcuffs like tiny angel’s wings behind each protestor’s back. They put the 13 women — as young as 21 and as old as 85 — in one cell and the eight men in the other.

Seven hours later, as we were released from our windowless cage into the beautiful summer evening, I felt an unspeakable gratitude to my cellmates and those who awaited us outside.

Should we go to trial, many of us will be arguing we did this out of necessity, in order to prevent a far greater looming evil — of being incinerated in our sleep, of doing nothing to stop this deadly fossil fuel cargo while hundreds of thousands of people die each year from floods, disease, malnutrition, and heat stress due to climate change.

Call me crazy, but we might just win this one. And in so doing, we’ll send a very strong message to the oil companies that threaten us all that they must end this madness.

 
Bakken Crude, Crude By Rail, Derailment, Oil trains, Stop Oil Trains Week of Action #StopOilTrains, Take Action, Tar sands crude

2016 Stop Oil Trains Week of Action – Benicia March Sunday 7/3!

Repost from STAND.earth
[Editor:  You can observe the Stop Oil Trains Week of Action in Benicia by marching in the annual Torchlight Parade on July 3.  – RS]

Citizens Call for a Ban on Deadly Oil Trains at Events Across US and Canada

  • The 2016 Week of Action marks the third anniversary of the tragic July 6, 2013, oil train disaster in Lac Megantic, Quebec, that killed 47 people.
  • On Friday, June 3, 2016, an oil train derailed in Mosier, OR, forcing the emergency evacuation of a 220 children from a school 250-yards from burning oil tank cars.
  • Oil trains have proven too dangerous for the rails: 14 major oil train derailments and fires in the past three years, yet these dangerous trains still bring millions of gallons of toxic, explosive crude oil through cities and towns across the US and Canada.
  • Each year since then communities have marked the solemn anniversary with events in dozens of cities and towns during the Stop Oil Train Week of Action.
  • July 6-12, 2016, citizens will gather again at events across the US and Canada to demand an immediate ban on oil trains. We are calling on President Obama, Congress and Governors to take three urgent steps to solve this problem.
    1. Ban oil trains: There is no safe way to transport crude oil by rail.
    2. Deny all federal permits for oil train infrastructure: Stop the oil industry from expanding oil train traffic carrying the dirtiest, most dangerous crude.
    3. Protect the authority of local governments: States, cities and citizens must have the right to say no to oil trains.Uphold the authority of our cities and towns to protect the public safety, and to ensure first responders have the necessary information and resources to respond to oil train disasters.

Oil Trains are Too Dangerous for the Rails.

  • The extreme Bakken and tar sands crude that the oil industry moves on trains is more toxic, more explosive, and more carbon-intensive than conventional oil.
  • More than 25 million Americans live in the blast zone and mining and refining this extreme oil puts  millions more Americans and Canadians at risk.
  • 14 major oil train fires in three years proves that crude oil is too dangerous for the rails. In Mosier, the tracks were inspected just days before the derailment, and only luck and a windless day kept the fire from four burning oil tank cars from reaching homes and a nearby school.
  • Oil train traffic, which was practically nonexistent seven years ago, has grown by 4,000 percent and the oil industry is proposing to further increase traffic, build more oil train terminals, and build new refinery infrastructure for dirtier crude oil carried by train.
  • We don’t need any of the extreme oil that is moving by train. The explosive Bakken and tar sands crude that moves by train is a tiny percent of US oil consumption and oil companies export five to seven times more oil each day than they move by train. So stop the trains tomorrow and our energy supply is not changed at all.
  • As we move our economy to clean energy and solve climate disruption we cannot at the same time allow oil companies to bring Bakken, tar sands and other fracked oil — the dirtiest, most dangerous sources of oil — onto the market.

Environmental Justice: Our railways were built to connect population centers, not carry hazardous materials. Decades of housing discrimination means that 60 percent of the 25 million Americans who live in the blast zone are people of color.

Note on Terminology: The term ‘crude-by-rail’ is the oil industry’s neutered term (abstract and without agency) for the dangerous, deadly, explosive oil trains they send through our cities and towns. There’s no reason to use ‘crude-by-rail’ when we can talk about the absolute danger of crude oil trains and the culpability of the oil and rail industry and regulators who send them across North America.

Bakken Crude, Crude By Rail, Derailment, Electronically controlled pneumatic braking (ECP), Federal Railroad Administration, Gov. Jay Inslee, Rail inspection, Union Pacific Railroad

Washington Governor Inslee calls for halt to Bakken crude oil trains

Repost from Progressive Railroading
[Editor:  Significant quote: “A preliminary report issued last week by the Federal Railroad Administration determined that UP did not adequately inspect tracks in the area and that an electronic braking system would have resulted in fewer derailed cars.”  – RS]

Washington Gov. Inslee calls on USDOT to step up crude-by-rail oversight

Progressive Railroading, 6/28/16

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee met late last week with Federal Railroad Administrator Sarah Feinberg to call for a halt to Bakken crude-oil trains through his state until additional federal safety requirements are in place.

The meeting was held in the wake of a Bakken crude-oil train derailment in Mosier, Ore., which resulted in a fire that burned for several hours near the Columbia River Gorge. The Union Pacific Railroad train originated in New Town, N.D., and was on its way to Tacoma, Wash., when the derailment occurred.

A preliminary report issued last week by the Federal Railroad Administration determined that UP did not adequately inspect tracks in the area and that an electronic braking system would have resulted in fewer derailed cars. Sixteen cars derailed in the incident.

“It is unclear at this point whether the FRA has the authority to order a stop to unsafe oil train transport, but they committed to looking into what they can do and will revisit what can be done to halt UP’s Bakken oil train transport until necessary safety improvements are made,” said Inslee in a prepared statement.

Inslee also made a separate request to UP to halt all oil train shipments through Washington until the Class I improves its track inspection protocols.

In the past, the governor has criticized the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) for not going far enough to strengthen federal oversight of crude-by-rail shipment.

“Action at the federal level is imperative. Slower train speeds, faster phase-out of older tank cars and electronic braking systems are real actions that can prevent potentially devastating accidents,” Inslee said. “I made clear to Feinberg that federal regulators need to act on these things immediately.”