Repost from AP in The San Francisco Chronicle [Editor: To paraphrase, ‘Bakken is no more volatile, we are already conditioning it, it would cost too much.’ …well, what did we expect them to say? – RS]
Oil reps say ND has proper rail shipment rules
By James MacPherson, Associated Press, September 23, 2014
In this June 5, 2012 file photo provided by Rangeland Energy, LLC, a train leaves the company’s crude oil loading terminal near Epping, ND. Oil industry representatives told North Dakota regulators Tuesday, Sept. 23, 2014, that the state has proper regulations in place to treat Bakken crude for shipment by rail. North Dakota’s Industrial Commission is considering new rules that would remove extra hydrocarbons from Bakken crude, a process some say might make the oil more safe for rail transport. Bakken crude has been linked to fiery oil train crashes like one outside Casselton, N.D., last December that left an ominous cloud over the town and led some residents to evacuate. | Photo: Courtesy Of Rangeland Energy, LLC, AP
BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — Oil producers in North Dakota are objecting to any new state regulations that would require them to reduce the volatility of crude before it’s loaded onto rail cars.
North Dakota’s Industrial Commission is considering new rules that would require companies to remove certain liquids and gasses from crude oil train shipments, a process some say would make such transport safer. But oil industry officials told the commission Tuesday that the state already has proper regulations in place.
“To date, no evidence has been presented to suggest that measureable safety improvements would result from processes beyond current oil conditioning,” Hess Corp. spokesman Brent Lohnes said.
Oil trains in the U.S. and Canada were involved in at least 10 major accidents during the last 18 months, including an explosion in Lac-Megantic, Quebec, that killed 47. Other trains carrying Bakken crude have since derailed and caught fire in Alabama, Virginia, North Dakota.
But Kari Cutting, vice president of the North Dakota Petroleum Council, said nine of the incidents involved derailments and one was due to a leaky valve.
“The material contained in these railcars was not the cause,” Cutting said.
A federal report released earlier this year by the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Administration says oil from North Dakota’s prolific Bakken formation may be more flammable than other crudes. But a report funded by the North Dakota Petroleum Council says Bakken oil is no more dangerous to transport by rail than other crudes and fuels.
Oil from North Dakota began being shipped by trains in 2008 when the state reached capacity for pipeline shipments. The state is now the nation’s No. 2 oil producer, behind Texas.
Cutting, whose group represents more than 500 companies working in North Dakota’s oil patch, said the each of the more than 11,000 oil wells in the state already has equipment in place to stabilize or condition the oil before shipment.
“Requiring stabilization beyond current conditioning practices would be a costly, redundant process that would not yield any additional safety benefits,” she said.
Industry officials also pointed out that stripping liquids and gases from Bakken crude would result in even-more volatile products that would still have to be shipped by rail.
Outside the Bismarck building where the commission was meeting, members of an environmental-minded landowner group hoisted a large banner that read, “Stop Bomb Trains, Stabilize Bakken Crude.”
Theodora Bird Bear of Mandaree, a spokeswoman for the Dakota Resource Council, told reporters that oil companies are cutting corners to boost their bottoms lines.
“When they talk about saving money, what they are really talking about is reducing public safety,” Bird Bear said.
Members of the group said the issue of safer Bakken oil goes well beyond North Dakota’s border.
“No one in this country feels safe around these rail lines,” Scott Skokos said.
Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton on Tuesday sent a letter to Gov. Jack Dalrymple, asking for additional safety measures for oil trains leaving North Dakota.
Alison Ritter, a spokeswoman for the regulatory panel, said a decision on whether to change state rules could come within 90 days.
Repost from KDVR Fox31 Denver [Editor: This investigative report details a May 9, 2014 derailment and a previous derailment in the exact same location, highly toxic benzene contamination of groundwater and slow notification of local first responders by Union Pacific. (Apologies for the video’s commercial content.) – RS]
Derailed: Railroad delays first responders on riverside oil spill
September 22, 2014, by Chris Halsne
DENVER — FOX31 Denver has confirmed a May 9 crude oil train car derailment near LaSalle, Colorado polluted area groundwater with toxic levels of benzene.
Environmental Protection Agency records from July show benzene measurements as high as 144 parts per billion near the crash site. Five parts per billion is considered the safe limit.
Federal accident records also show six Union Pacific tankers ripped apart from the train and flipped into a ditch due to a “track misalignment caused by a soft roadbed.” One of the tankers cracked and spilled approximately7,000 gallons of Niobrara crude, according to the EPA.
FOX31 Denver’s investigative team also confirmed the oil car accident location, only about 75 yards from the South Platte River, is in the same spot as another Union Pacific derailment four years ago.
Reports show four rail cars full of wheat/grain derailed in October 2010. The cause of that accident was very similar: “roadbed settled or soft” and “other rail and joint bar defects.”
“They did have a derailment at the exact same point. I mean within feet!” witness Glenn Werning, a nearby farmer and local water supervisor, told FOX31 Denver investigative reporter Chris Halsne.
Werning wonders if Union Pacific was negligent in repairing the area after the first crash telling Halsne, “It would have been devastating if it had gotten into the water and flowed down. It would have been, whew! The oil spill would have been a mess to clean up because it would have been on both sides of the river for miles.”
Union Pacific declined FOX31 Denver’s repeated requests for an on-camera interview, but a spokesperson, Mark Davis, sent a statement which says in part:
“The line where the derailment occurred is visually inspected one time per week. The maximum speed limit on the line is 20 mph. Prior to the derailment the track was visually inspected on April 26, April 28, May 1 and May 5 with no exceptions taken. Our track team visually inspects about 15,500 miles of track daily on our 32,000 mile network in 23 states – this translates into 5.7 million miles annually of visional track inspections.”
There is currently no way to double-check the accuracy or completeness of Union Pacific’s statement because private railroads are allowed to conduct their own safety inspections and keep such records private.
Federal law only allows the Federal Railroad Administration to audit railroad inspections to make sure “the owner of the track” is conducting them appropriately.
However, at least in Colorado, that has not been done for at least three years.
FOX31 Denver’s investigative team sent Freedom of Information Act requests asking how often the FRA audited private railroad safety inspections in Colorado. The answer: From January 1, 2012 to March, 2014 is zero.
San Francisco-based Environmental Attorney and Sierra Club activist, Devorah Ancel, says the fact that private railroads conduct their own rail line and rail car safety inspections with very little federal oversight is a growing problem.
Ancel told FOX31 Denver, “The rail industry wants to get as much of this crude to market as quickly as possible. The more the federal government cracks down on safety standards, inspections, on audits, the more they are going to push back because it`s going to affect their bottom line.”
Ancel is part of a group also pressing the Department of Transportation for improvements in the design of hazardous liquid-carrying rail cars. Currently most crude oil travels across tracks in older-model containers called DOT 111’s.
According to federal authorities, the Union Pacific oil tanker which rolled, cracked and then spewed thousands of gallons of crude onto the ground in May’s accident is considered a DOT 111 design.
“This is extremely volatile crude. The tank cars have thin shells. They have thin head shields that are known to puncture during derailment. They have valves that sheer off and puncture during derailment,” Ancel says.
As if multiple derailments in the same place, unverified safety inspections, and outdated oil tanker containers were not enough of a reason for public concern, FOX31 Denver also discovered that Union Pacific officials are being accused of delaying telling local emergency responders about the latest oil car derailment.
According to Weld County Emergency Manager Roy Rudisill, Union Pacific first rallied its own crews to the scene before putting local firefighters in the loop.
Halsne asked, “Were they a little late to let you know?” Rudisill answered, “In my opinion, yes!”
We checked. According to a federal report, the accident happened at around 8 a.m. on May 9.
FOX31 Denver pulled call logs surrounding the accident and found Union Pacific first notified the state Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management at 9:10 am.
Radio traffic shows Weld County fire crews and emergency managers were still scrambling another hour later, trying to figure out exactly where the accident had occurred and whether oil was leaking into the South Platte River.
Rudisill told FOX31 Denver, “A quicker phone call, quicker communication, faster communication to local jurisdiction would have been prudent in my opinion. Now we’ve had two incidents out there. What can we do to make sure the proper actions are taking place so we don’t have another one?”
Werning hates to lay blame entirely on Union Pacific admitting “accidents do happen,” but he`s closely watching their latest track repair efforts, never again wanting to count on “pure luck” as a disaster prevention plan.
“Had they perhaps done a better repair (after the first derailment), they wouldn`t have dropped those cars,” Werning said.
The Environmental Protection Agency said it continues to monitor the groundwater contamination issue. Monitoring wells have been installed in the area surrounding the oil spill. Benzene is a common chemical in oil and gasoline and it does naturally dissipate over time.
More Fiery Oil Train, Pipeline Accidents Unless Government Acts: Report
September 22, 2014
If the U.S. doesn’t quickly address the safe transportation of oil and gas, Americans could pay the price with more fiery train and pipeline accidents, according to a report released Monday by the Government Accountability Office.
“Without timely action to address safety risks posed by increased transport of oil and gas by pipeline and rail, additional accidents that could have been prevented or mitigated may endanger the public and call into question the readiness of transportation networks in the new oil and gas environment,” found the report.
The GAO report focused on the safety of moving crude oil by train and the growing network of “gathering lines,” largely unregulated natural gas pipelines. Both have been subjects of recent investigations by NBC News. The GAO determined that the Department of Transportation had “not kept pace with the changing oil and gas transportation environment.”
Oil and gas production in the U.S. increased more than fivefold between 2007 and 2012, a boom brought on by technological advances in drilling and hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking.” Vast volumes of oil and gas production soon outstripped the pipeline infrastructure in place to move them.
Crude producers began to load their oil on trains. More than 400,000 carloads of crude ran over North American rails in 2013, up from just 9,500 in 2008. But a series of explosive wrecks have raised concern about the safety of oil trains — the worst, a 2013 derailment outside a small Quebec town, killed nearly 50 people.
A 2013 NBC News investigation found regulators had long known that the tank cars used to ship oil were vulnerable to rupture in an accident.
The DOT has since issued proposed rules to improve the train cars that carry oil. In its report, the GAO applauded the move, but emphasized safety improvements must go beyond the cars, including testing the makeup of the oil, which the DOT has said is particularly flammable.
The GAO also warned better oversight was needed over the growing network of “gathering pipelines” that move natural gas from the well. In August, an investigation by NBC News found that 250,000 miles of these lines are in rural areas and subject to little or no federal or state safety oversight, despite sometimes running beside homes.
Nebraska has emerged as ground zero in oil transport showdown
September 21, 2014, By Russell Hubbard
SARAH HOFFMAN/THE WORLD-HERALD | Oakland, Nebraska, and the tracks that carry trains through town have been together for more than 100 years. But trains hauling crude oil in tanker cars through Oakland and other parts of the state are a recent development, and concerns about safety grow. Oil pipelines such as the proposed Keystone XL have their opponents as well.
OAKLAND, Neb. — If you visit here and turn off Oakland Avenue toward the railroad tracks, you just might find Brendan Murray prowling up and down the street, cataloging the cracks in the pavement and the scars on the buildings.
SARAH HOFFMAN/THE WORLD-HERALD | Brendan Murray holds a piece of a building that fell near the tracks. He often walks Oakland Avenue cataloging cracks in the pavement and on buildings that he suspects are caused by vibrations from oil trains.
The owner of an apartment building facing the railroad tracks says problems with his 100-year-old structure accelerated with the massive increase in BNSF Railway trains hauling crude oil in tanker cars. Murray also says a derailment and crude oil fire would be deadly for Oakland, population 1,244.
“Keep it underground,” Murray says, referring to transporting crude by pipeline.
Not so fast, says Jane Kleeb. She is not a fan of crude trains either, but she is also the director of Bold Nebraska, the group opposed to construction of the Keystone XL pipeline. It would bring 1 million barrels of crude oil per day across the state.
Kleeb said her group doesn’t expect the world economy to forgo fossil fuels and survive on renewables right now. But she said the pipeline proposed to transport northern crudes to refineries presents too much environmental risk.
“Accidents are going to happen and it is Nebraska that is going to wind up paying for it,” Kleeb said.
All of which leaves a rather obvious question: If neither by train nor pipeline, just how is oil supposed to get from where it is produced to where it is refined into fuels and other materials that power the U.S. economy?
With its main modes of transport assaulted on all sides, the petroleum industry faces a major showdown, and Nebraska is shaping up to be ground zero.
Central to both major U.S. railroads hauling crude oil — Union Pacific is based in Omaha and BNSF’s parent company is based here — the Cornhusker State is also the terminus of the existing Keystone pipeline and is the proposed ending point for the much-debated and delayed Keystone XL.
“Some of the people who don’t want us to transport oil don’t want us to use oil,” said John Felmy, chief economist for the American Petroleum Institute, a group funded by oil companies. “We need to do a better job about telling our story, but we also need to be honest about the realities of energy.”
The United States last year consumed 6.89 billion barrels of petroleum products, producing 2.7 billion barrels itself, making it the global leader. Oil is everywhere — about 71 percent goes for gasoline and other fuels. Other common uses are rubber, fabrics and solvents.
There are no current replacements for oil, Felmy said, calling renewable energies promising and worthy of development but not an immediate substitute. And “choking off the supply points and the transport links would have serious implications for the economy,” Felmy said.
One of those transport links runs through Oakland. The rear of the buildings along Oakland Avenue, 20 or so brick and masonry two- and three-floor structures, face the north-south railroad tracks operated by BNSF Railway, the employer of 5,000 people in Nebraska that is owned by Omaha’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc.
The closest buildings, such as Murray’s 12-unit apartment building, are about 45 yards away.
The tracks and the town in Burt County have been together for more than 100 years. But the oil trains are a recent development. Oil shipments from North Dakota’s recently tapped shale formations first hit 800,000 barrels a day late last year, up from fewer than 100,000 barrels a day in 2010.
BNSF is by far the largest carrier, its oil trains entering Nebraska at South Sioux City from routes in Iowa. Oil has been a growth business for BNSF: Volumes from shale formations such as those in North Dakota have risen to 620,000 barrels per day last year, from 59,000 barrels per day in 2010.
Transporting crude has been a huge boost for BNSF, bought for $26 billion in 2009 by Omaha’s Berkshire Hathaway. BNSF operating revenue, the main financial metric by which railroads are gauged, has risen almost 60 percent since 2009, to about $22 billion last year from $14 billion.
“You can feel the ground surging when they come through now,” said the 72-year-old Murray, a graduate of Omaha’s Benson High School who later owned a general contracting company. “It’s just that the railroad has always been here and people don’t pay it much attention anymore.”
A tour of Murray’s street reveals a collapsed brick wall, lots of hairline cracks and loose masonry. Murray acknowledges that most of the buildings are 100 years old or older, and that he can’t prove the cause. But he said he suspects the culprits are the heavy liquid cargo and the increased frequency of trains passing by because of sharply higher crude shipments.
BNSF says: Nonsense. “We know of no mandated statutes requiring maximum or minimum weights for trains, although there are different weight rails according to the type, size and speed of trains,” said BNSF spokeswoman Roxanne Butler.
The railroads say oil by rail, while the subject of much debate, is quite safe.
In 2012, according to the Association of American Railroads, the incident rate for release of hazardous materials from rail cars was 0.013 per thousand carloads, down from 0.14 in 1980. That means, the association says, that 99.99 percent of hazardous rail cargo shipments are incident-free.
It is a highly regulated industry. Federal regulators set the standards for hauling crude and other hazardous materials, from the route selection and track inspections to train speeds and personnel training, the railroad association says.
“According to the Federal Railroad Administration, 2013 was the safest year in history for the rail industry,” said BNSF’s Butler. “In 2013, BNSF experienced the fewest number of mainline derailments in its history. Rail is the safest mode of land transportation for freight in general and is one of the safest ways to transport crude oil and hazardous materials.”
Butler said BNSF considers all accidents preventable, and is spending $5 billion this year on capital improvements. The Fort Worth, Texas-based company, about tied with Union Pacific as largest U.S. railroad in 2013 operating revenue, also inspects track more frequently than required by regulators, Butler said.
Union Pacific is spending $4.1 billion on capital improvements this year, much of that related to track safety.
U.P. Chief Executive Jack Koraleski said the industry also is working with the Department of Transportation to make existing crude tank cars safer, and to develop a new and stronger one.
There has never been a fatal U.S. oil-train incident, though 47 people were killed last year when one derailed and blew up in Quebec, Canada.
Koraleski, whose company employs about 8,000 people in Nebraska, said the probabilities of such accidents are small and the trade-offs worth it.
“We have been hauling crude by rail for a long time,” said Koraleski, whose oil shipments rose 20 percent last year. “If the pipelines don’t, and the railroads don’t, the alternatives are fully negative for the U.S. economy.”
As for the Keystone XL pipeline proposed by pipeline operator TransCanada, it is on hold pending permit approval by President Barack Obama.
It should not be approved, said Kleeb, the director of Bold Nebraska. She said the pipeline endangers the Ogallala Aquifer and only encourages oil companies to spend additional money chasing harder-to-get deposits, such as shale formations in the northern United States and southern Canada. Those require rocks underground to be broken up under high pressure to release the petroleum.
Kleeb says she and her group are not against fossil fuels, acknowledging that it would be impractical to go 100 percent renewable immediately. She also said ceasing production from hard-to-get deposits in North Dakota’s Bakken region isn’t going to send the economy into a malaise. The Bakken produces about a million barrels a day out of the 19 million consumed each day in the country.
“What we need to do is slow down,” Kleeb said. “The oil isn’t going anywhere. You can make all the money you need to make.”
Mark Johnson, the Nebraska spokesman for TransCanada, said pipelines are the most efficient method of transporting oil between distant points, passing along the lowest costs to consumers.
“The bottom line is that the United States needs oil and it is going to get to market one way or another,” Johnson said.
The Keystone pipeline, now about four years old, runs from the southern Canadian province of Alberta and terminates in southern Nebraska at Steele City, the proposed endpoint for the Keystone XL.
Johnson said danger to the Ogallala is low, with nature having provided the aquifer with a deep and effective filtering system of sand and rock. Pipelines and oil wells already dot the Ogallala landscape, Johnson said, and the existing Keystone pipeline has operated without serious incident.
Like oil-train accidents, pipeline incidents tend to be attention-grabbing, such as the one in Kalamazoo, Michigan, in 2010, when an oil pipeline broke and spilled almost 1 million gallons. Cleanup costs have approached $1 billion.
From 1994 through 2013, there were 2,715 significant pipeline incidents, according to the federal Pipeline & Hazardous Materials Safety Administration. That is an average of 136 a year, defined as causing death or hospitalization, incurring costs of more than $50,000, or erupting in fire or explosion. The incidents have caused 40 deaths and 132 injuries.
Joseph Schwieterman, a professor at Chicago’s DePaul University specializing in transportation, said perfect safety in the U.S. economy’s supply chain — train or pipeline or any other mode — is an unreasonable expectation.
“The accidents that happen are headline makers, but the risks are manageable,” he said. “The hype is out of proportion.”
Schwieterman also said there is a generational component to opinions on oil production and the transportation of its products.
“Oil invokes a negative, visceral reaction among young people,” Schwieterman said, acknowledging that high-profile troubles such as the 2010 BP Gulf Coast oil rig blowout has had the same effect on some people as the Exxon Valdez tanker spill in 1989.
“People tend to forget about the value of energy independence,” he said, “and that such independence will come at a certain price.”
The Omaha World-Herald Co. is owned by Berkshire Hathaway Inc.
