Category Archives: Crude By Rail

Bakken Crude, Crude By Rail, Derailment, Explosion, Fire

10 Recent Oil Train Crashes in the US and Canada

Repost from ABC News
[Editor:  It’s good to find a compilation of these catastrophic oil train accidents all in one place.  See also a listing on SafeBenicia.org, somewhat out of date but with more detail and photos.  – RS]

Recent Oil Train Crashes in the US and Canada

By The Associated Press, May 1, 2015, 3:28 PM ET

Sweeping regulations to boost the safety of trains transporting crude oil, ethanol and other flammable liquids were announced Friday by U.S. and Canadian officials. The long-awaited regulations are a response to a series of oil train accidents in both countries over the last few years that have resulted in spectacular fires that burned for days.

Here are some of those accidents:

— July 5, 2013: A runaway Montreal, Maine & Atlantic Railway train that had been left unattended derailed, spilling oil and catching fire inside the town of Lac-Megantic in Quebec. Forty-seven people were killed and 30 buildings burned in the town’s center. About 1.6 million gallons of oil was spilled. The oil was being transported from the Bakken region of North Dakota, the heart of an oil fracking boom, to a refinery in Canada.

— Nov. 8, 2013: An oil train from North Dakota derailed and exploded near Aliceville, Alabama. There were no deaths but an estimated 749,000 gallons of oil spilled from 26 tanker cars.

— Dec. 30, 2013: A fire engulfed tank cars loaded with oil on a Burlington Northern-Santa Fe train after a collision about a mile from Casselton, North Dakota. No one was injured, but more than 2,000 residents were evacuated as emergency responders struggled with the intense fire.

— Jan. 7, 2014: A 122-car Canadian National Railway train derailed in New Brunswick, Canada. Three cars containing propane and one car transporting crude oil from Western Canada exploded after the derailment, creating intense fires that burned for days. About 150 residents of nearby Plaster Rock were evacuated.

— Jan. 20, 2014: Seven CSX train cars, six of them containing oil from the Bakken region, derailed on a bridge over the Schuylkill River in Philadelphia. The bridge is near the University of Pennsylvania, a highway and three hospitals. No oil was spilled and no one was injured. The train from Chicago was more than 100 cars long.

— April 30, 2014: Fifteen cars of a crude oil train derail in Lynchburg, Virginia, near a railside eatery and a pedestrian waterfront, sending flames and black plumes of smoke into the air. Nearly 30,000 gallons of oil were spilled into the James River.

— Feb. 14, 2015: A 100-car Canadian National Railway train hauling crude oil and petroleum distillates derailed in a remote part of Ontario, Canada. The blaze it ignited burned for days.

— Feb. 16, 2015: A 109-car CSX oil train derailed and caught fire near Mount Carbon, West Virginia, leaking oil into a Kanawha River tributary and burning a house to its foundation. The blaze burned for most of week.

— March 10, 2015: 21 cars of a 105-car Burlington Northern-Santa Fe train hauling oil from the Bakken region of North Dakota derailed about 3 miles outside Galena, Illinois, a town of about 3,000 in the state’s northwest corner.

— March 7, 2015: A 94-car Canadian National Railway crude oil train derailed about 3 miles outside the Northern Ontario town of Gogama. The resulting fire destroyed a bridge. The accident was only 23 miles from the Feb. 14th derailment.

Crude By Rail, Emergency Readiness & Response, Ethanol, Federal pre-emption, Federal Regulation (U.S.), Hazmat notification, High Hazard Flammable Trains (HHFTs), Homeland Security, Rail routing

New oil-train safety rules will put public back in the dark

Repost from the Bellingham Herald

New oil-train safety rules will put public back in the dark

By Curtis Tate, McClatchy Washington Bureau, May 1, 2015

WASHINGTON — Details about rail shipments of crude oil and ethanol will be made exempt from public disclosure under new regulations announced by the U.S. Department of Transportation on Friday.

The department will end its requirement, put in place a year ago, that required railroads to share information about large volumes of Bakken crude oil with state officials.

Instead, railroads will share information directly with emergency responders, but it will be exempt from the Freedom of Information Act and state public records laws, the way other hazardous materials such as chlorine and anhydrous ammonia are currently protected.

After a CSX train carrying Bakken crude oil derailed and caught fire in Lynchburg, Va., on April 30 last year, federal regulators required railroads to notify emergency response agencies of shipments of 1 million gallons or more of Bakken crude oil through their states.

The railroads complied, but asked states to sign agreements to keep the information confidential. Some agreed, but most refused, citing a conflict with their open records laws.

Using FOIA and state public records laws, McClatchy last year obtained full or partial data on Bakken rail shipments from 24 states. Another five states denied McClatchy’s requests.

CSX and Norfolk Southern, the dominant eastern railroads, sued Maryland to block the state from releasing its information to McClatchy. A trial is scheduled for next month.

McClatchy, however, was able to obtain some of the information about the Maryland shipments by going to Amtrak. Norfolk Southern uses a portion of the passenger railroad’s Northeast Corridor for its crude oil trains.

Last fall, the rail industry’s leading trade groups quietly asked the Transportation Department to drop the requirement.

In pretrial documents in the Maryland lawsuit, the railroads’ lawyers maintain that disclosure of the information – including the routes the trains take and the counties through which they pass – could compromise security, erode the companies’ competitive edge and harm their customers.

As of October, the Federal Railroad Administration disagreed. It said that information about the Bakken shipments was neither security nor commercially sensitive and was not exempt from public release. It also said it would continue the reporting requirement.

But on page 242 of the 395-page final rule the department published on Friday, it appeared that the railroads got their wish.

Starting next year, emergency responders will have access to information about shipments of all types of crude oil, not just Bakken, ethanol and other flammable liquids. The volume threshold will also be lowered to 20 or more cars of flammable liquid in a continuous block, or 35 or more cars dispersed throughout a train.

The shipments, however, will be classified as “security sensitive” and details about them shielded from the public.

“Under this approach,” the regulation states, “the transportation of crude oil by rail can…avoid the negative security and business implications of widespread public disclosure of routing and volume data.”

Bakken Crude, CPC-1232, Crude By Rail, DOT-111, Environmental review, Explosion, Federal Regulation (U.S.), Rail Safety, Tank car retirement, Tank car retrofit, Valero Benicia Refinery, Valero Crude By Rail, Volatility, West Coast refineries

New rules for crude-by-rail transport fall short

Repost from SFGate (San Francisco Chronicle)

New rules for crude-by-rail transport fall short

By Lois Kazakoff on May 1, 2015 5:50 PM
Oil imports by rail account for just about 1 percent of total shipments to California refineries, but they are rising rapidly. Above, trains at a Union Pacific yard in Bloomington, Calif.
California moves to prevent spills of oil shipped by trains – Oil imports by rail account for just about 1 percent of total shipments to California refineries, but they are rising rapidly. Above, trains at a Union Pacific yard in Bloomington, Calif. Photo By Irfan Khan/Los Angeles Times/MCT

The U.S. Department of Transportation unveiled new rules on transporting crude oil by rail Friday that set a timeline to get old-technology, easily punctured tank cars off U.S. and Canadian rail lines but fail to address the explosive nature of the Bakken crude that sparked the public’s concerns to begin with.

While the new rules are a step toward safer rail transport, it is a disappointing decision for the dozens of communities the oil trains roll through on the way to West Coast refineries. The new rules get the old DOT-111 cars off the rails over the next three years, and beef up the steel gauge required to construct the new CPC-1232 cars. But the Department of Transportation itself noted nearly a decade ago that the old cars punctured in minor, low-speed collisions. The new rules should have immediately banned them rather than phasing them out.

Most distressing is that the new rules do not set a standard for the volatility of what goes in the tank cars. Lower volatility would reduce the risk of explosions. Crude extracted from the Bakken Oil Shale is significantly more volatile than other types of petroleum — a fact the Department of Transportation has acknowledged and the public became aware of in July 2013 when a train carrying Bakken crude exploded in Lac Megantic, Ontario.

The new rules will do little to allay the worries of residents in Davis, Martinez and Pinole, where railroad tracks crisscross streets, or in Benicia, where Valero has applied for permission to retrofit its refinery to receive crude by rail in addition to crude by tanker ship. Valero has proposed moving the oil in the CPC-1232 cars, limiting oil trains to 50 cars rather than the more standard unit of 100 cars, and reducing train speeds in town. The City of Benicia is expected to release the draft environmental impact report on the project June 30.

Bills introduced in the House and the Senate this month would address these concerns, and more, notably requirements to notify first responders in real time when the trains are coming through. The new department rules require a railroads to provide a telephone number for first responders to call but do not require notification.

“These rules do not go far enough in addressing the safety concerns posed by trains transporting highly volatile crude oil through the heart of our communities,” said Rep. Mike Thompson, D-St. Helena. “We need to put robust, comprehensive safety measures in place that will help make sure communities are safe, rail cars meet the strongest possible standards, and first responders are prepared in the event of an emergency. DOT’s rules do not sufficiently address these issues and so Congress should act to put safety measures in place.”

Action in Congress this month presaged the announcement of the new less-than-adequate Department of Transportation regulations.

Thompson’s bill, introduced April 15 and co-authored with Reps. Jim McDermott, D-Wash., Doris Matsui, D-Sacramento, and Ron Kind, D-Wis., would require volatility standards and weekly communications between first responders and railroad officials about crude oil trains.

In the Senate, Sens. Dianne Feinstein, D-San Francisco, Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., introduced legislation April 30 to protect communities from oil train accidents, focusing on communication with first responders.

Last year saw a record 144 rail accidents in the U.S., up from just one in 2009. The volume of oil cars, however, has increased by 4000 percent since 2008.

Rep. Thompson has it right: Congress needs to step in and demand better protections for communities on the rail lines.

Crude By Rail, Emergency Readiness & Response, Explosion, Federal Regulation (U.S.), First responder training, Tank car design, Tank car retirement, Volatility

Senator Cantwell: “The new DOT rule is just like saying let the oil trains roll. It does nothing…”

Senator Cantwell Press Release
[Editor:  For the full text of the 395-page rule, see http://www.dot.gov/sites/dot.gov/files/docs/final-rule-flammable-liquids-by-rail_0.pdf.  – RS]

Cantwell Statement on DOT Crude-by-Rail Safety Rules

May 1, 2015

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senator Maria Cantwell (D-WA) issued the following statement on the U.S. Department of Transportation’s new rules governing the safety of oil train tank cars.

“The new DOT rule is just like saying let the oil trains roll. It does nothing to address explosive volatility, very little to reduce the threat of rail car punctures, and is too slow on the removal of the most dangerous cars. It’s more of a status quo rule than the real safety changes needed to protect the public and first responders.”

In March following four fiery derailments involving oil trains, Cantwell introduced the Crude-By-Rail Safety Act of 2015 with Senators Patty Murray (D-WA), Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), and Jeff Merkley (D-OR). The legislation requires the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) to establish new regulations to mitigate the volatility of gases in crude oil shipped via tank car. It also would immediately halt the use of older-model tank cars at high risk for puncturing and catching fire in derailments, as well approving $40 million for first responder training programs to improve emergency response procedures.