Category Archives: Crude By Rail

Air Quality, Bakken Crude, Crude By Rail, Draft EIR, Valero Crude By Rail

Benicia Herald Op Ed: My Dream for Benicia, by Sue Kibbe

Repost from The Benicia Herald
[Editor: Sue Kibbe also submitted her “Dream for Benicia” to the Benicia Planning Commission as a comment for the record on Valero Crude By Rail.  – RS]

My dream for Benicia

by Sue Kibbe

I HAVE A DREAM THAT ONE DAY BENICIA WILL RISE UP and be known across the nation as the Little City that said “No” to Big Oil, putting human life and environmental stewardship above human greed and the insatiable quest for increased profits. What a proud day it would be if Benicia said the risk to the thousands living up-rail is too high a price to pay.

Because it is too high a price to pay. The effect on the environment from a spill or explosion would be an unmitigated disaster, a fire that cannot be extinguished, a toxic slick destroying every living thing.

Crude-by-rail has been called “a disaster in the making” by more than one expert. A railway safety consultant has warned, “We’ve got all kinds of failings on all sides, inadequacies that are coming to light because trains are blowing up all over the place.” The Federal Railroad Administration is able to inspect only two-tenths of 1 percent of railroad operations each year. With 140,000 rail miles across the nation, regular inspection of the tracks is impossible.

The Department of Transportation has yet to provide regulations for crude-by-rail transport. Expect pushback from the rail industry. Safety measures such as “positive train control” (PTC) were recommended 45 years ago, yet the technology operates on only a tiny slice of America’s rail network. The railroads have preempted local control and can make routing decisions without public disclosure.

Meanwhile, aging rail trestles and lines such as the one through Feather River Canyon — lines that were never constructed for such heavy traffic — continue to be used with greater frequency. The New York Times reported last month that “400,000 carloads of crude oil traveled by rail last year . . . up from 9,500 in 2008. . . . From 1975 to 2012, federal records show, (railroads) spilled 800,000 gallons of crude oil. Last year alone, they spilled more the 1.15 million gallons.”

Scott Smith, a scientist whose work has focused on oil spills, has studied samples of the Bakken crude oil from three accident sites. He may be the only expert outside the oil industry to have analyzed this crude. All the samples he studied share the same high levels of volatile organic compounds (VOC) and alkane gases in exceptional combinations. Smith says 30 percent to 40 percent of Bakken crude is made up of toxic and explosive gases. “Any form of static electricity will ignite this stuff and blow it up,” he said.

The Wall Street Journal, based on its own analysis, reported that Bakken has significantly more combustible gases and a higher vapor pressure than oil from other formations. Basically, its flash point is dangerously low, and a chain reaction from tank car to tank car is inevitable.

Examining the draft environmental impact report (DEIR)

Pay attention to the wording in Valero’s proposal: “The Project would not increase the amount of crude oil that can be processed at the refinery . . .” It never says the amount of crude oil that “is being processed” at the refinery. In the DEIR, page 3-2, it says: “The Refinery’s crude oil processing rate is limited to an annual average of 165,000 barrels per day (daily maximum of 180,000 barrels) by its operating permit.” That is a huge increase from the 70,000 barrels per day that it says are processed now. With the 70,000 by rail per day, add 18 vessels shipping 350,000 barrels per vessel — that equals 6,300,000 barrels, a total of 31,850,000 barrels per year — thus an increase in processing, and hence in emissions.

We have read in a Bay Area newspaper that “Valero was named by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency this year as one of California’s top distributors of dangerous substances. It was second to the ConocoPhillips refinery in Rodeo as the most profligate disseminator of poisons in the Bay Area, releasing 504,472 pounds of toxic substances into the air, water or ground. It was the 10th biggest source of chemicals and pollutants in the state, according to (a) report released in January.

“Almost half of the violations cited by the (Bay Area Air Quality Management District) between 2011 and 2012 involved excessive short-term emissions and valve leaks on tanks.”

According to the DEIR, Section 4.1-23: An unmitigated, significant and unavoidable air quality violation, with a net increase in Nitrogen oxides and ozone precursor emissions would result from transporting crude by rail through the communities up-rail within the Sacramento Basin: in the Yolo-Solano, Sacramento Metropolitan and Placer County Air Quality Management Districts.

How can we, in good conscience — or even legally — violate the air quality of our neighbors to the north by authorizing these shipments? And not only would we affect their air quality, we also would authorize the transport of a highly toxic, corrosive, flammable material in 36, 500 tank cars, each weighing 143 tons when loaded with crude oil — an annual total of 1,460 locomotives weighing more than 7,150 tons when loaded — through these communities, over rails that were never built for and have never carried such heavy traffic, all for the sole purpose of satisfying human greed?

Valero’s net income rose 28 percent in the first quarter of 2014; net income to shareholders jumped to $828 million, while revenues rose to $33.6 billion. If you are telling me that Valero needs this project to stay competitive, you haven’t looked at the facts.

A closer look at ‘job creation,’ one of the claimed benefits to the community from crude-by-rail

The addition of 20 full-time jobs at the refinery will be the result of switching from crude by vessel to rail delivery. There will be 72 fewer vessel deliveries, in which crude is pumped directly from a ship at the dock into pipes and storage tanks in one operation. Instead, there will be 36,500 tank cars per year to be emptied at the refinery, coupling and uncoupling 100 tank cars per day.

Let’s be clear, these are HAZMAT jobs. Not only would you be unloading one of the most toxic substances on the planet, breathing in toxic “fugitive emissions” from the tank cars, you also would be in direct contact with the toxic emissions from 730 locomotives per year. The only thing appealing about these new jobs will be the “good pay” (they are never described as “good jobs”), because they are hazardous, arduous, truly nasty jobs.

Section 4.6.5 Impacts and Mitigation Measures: Greenhouse Gas Emissions

Another one of the project’s “benefits” much proclaimed by Valero is the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. Valero states that crude by rail would “improve air quality in the Bay Area.” They are not lying — this is a carefully worded deception. The Bay Area Air Quality Management District is a huge area encompassing every county that touches the Bay, the entirety of every county except for Sonoma and Solano counties. This is the area in which they can legally claim to improve air quality.

The mitigating factor here is the reduced number of oil tankers traversing the Bay. What they calculated were the emissions from 72 ships that will no longer be sailing across 49.5 miles — from the sea buoy outside the Golden Gate to the Valero dock in Benicia and back out again. (That’s 99 miles total for each of the 72 tankers.) They were allowed to subtract those Bay Area emissions from the direct emissions that will be generated right here from construction of the rail terminal, the unloading of crude oil and the 730 locomotive engines moving through the Industrial Park.

This, then, gives Valero a “less than significant” increase in emissions (DEIR Table 4.1-5) — but in reality, while reducing emissions out in the Bay they will be increasing them right here where we live and breathe by 18,433 metric tons per year (DEIR Table 4.6-5). This may be legal in terms of the permitting process, and good news for sailboats on the Bay, but for the people of Benicia and especially for any businesses located in the Industrial Park, it is a terrible deal.

What people need to understand is that this “mitigation” in the “Bay Area” has been used to offset the very real pollution that will happen right here in our city. That pollution is not reduced by one particle, except on paper. To tell us that this is a “benefit” to Benicia is hugely hypocritical and a manipulation of the facts. Do not be deceived. Know that the pollution in this city will increase as a result of crude by rail, and the “mitigation” out in the Bay actually works against us. And if you have a business in the Industrial Park, you will be in the thick of it.

Further emissions and omissions

The DEIR, page 4.1-21, states: “. . . locomotives generate more emissions than marine vessels per mile, per 1,000,000 barrels of crude oil delivered each year, of ROG (reactive organic gas), NOx, (nitrogen oxide), CO (carbon monoxide), PM10 and PM25 (particulate matter of differing micron size).” Estimates are vague regarding all this pollution. We are supposed to take comfort, however, in the decrease in marine emissions from fewer oil tankers traveling from Alaska, South America and the Middle East, which according to this document is supposed to offset all but the lethal NOx from the trains. It’s fancy figuring, subtracting what is happening on the ocean blue from the reality of emissions from 1,460 locomotives, each traveling more than 1,500 miles, that would be added to the terrestrial U.S., directly to hundreds of communities, farms and forests along the railways. The impact would, in fact, be “significant and unavoidable.”

But all this is avoidable — if Benicia declares a moratorium on crude by rail.

I have a dream today . . . that could all too easily become tomorrow’s nightmare.

Sue Kibbe is a longtime resident of Benicia’s Highlands district.

Bakken Crude, CPC-1232 standard, Crude By Rail, DOT-111

Outdated tank cars carry explosive crude in NY; feds seek refit

Repost from lohud.com, the Journal News
[Editor: Check out the map of rail routes in NY State showing schools, hospitals and shopping centers along the oil train tracks.  (Zoom in on the area about 35 miles north of New York City.)  – RS]

Outdated tankers carry explosive crude; feds seek refit

Khurram Saeed, August 16, 2014

When you see an oil train roll by, you’re probably looking at a DOT-111 tank car.

The DOT-111s are an industry workhorse. They’ve been around for decades and make up 68 percent of the 335,000 tank cars in active use.

Until recently, the non-pressurized cars weren’t used to haul oil. That changed with the Bakken oil boom and when rail became the modern-day pipelines.

The federal government now wants the industry to retrofit or replace them over the next two years in the name of safety. Currently, 100,000 DOT-111s move crude oil and ethanol but only 20,000 meet the latest safety standards, making the older models susceptible to ripping open in a derailment or collision.

Railroads like CSX own fewer than 1 percent of the tank cars; most are owned by the oil industry and leasing firms, the Association of American Railroads says.

The U.S. Department of Transportation wants new tank cars to have thicker outer shells, thermal protection, a full-height head shield, rollover safeguards for top fittings and removable handles on valves that protrude from the bottom of the cars to reduce the risk of opening in an accident.

Eric de Place, a policy director at Seattle-based think tank Sightline Institute, said the valves, which are used to drain fluid, likely would remain even though federal investigators have found they can shear off or open in derailments, causing the car’s contents to spill and possibly catch fire.

“Generally speaking, the oil producers — abetted by the oil shippers and the railroads themselves — have encouraged a go-slow approach to upgrading safety standards,” de Place wrote in an email. “They are principally concerned that requirements to use new tank cars or to retrofit existing ones would cost money and reduce the fleet available to move oil in the near term.”

Phil Musegaas, Hudson River program director for Riverkeeper, said the rules do not go “nearly far enough” to protect the public and the environment, and include loopholes. He said the safer tank cars would only have to be used on trains that have 20 or more rail cars hauling flammable liquids.

“If they don’t like these safety standards, they can continue to ship oil in mixed trains with 19 older DOT-111s on them,” Musegaas said. “It doesn’t take 20 of these cars to cause a horrific accident.”

Riverkeeper and other environmental groups have called on the DOT to ban use of the tank cars immediately, citing an imminent risk to the public.

“How we ship this oil can be figured out later,” Musegaas said. “We need to protect communities that live near these oil trains.”

Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., has been calling for stricter standards for the “dangerous, crude-carrying” DOT-111s since last year.

“These much-needed regulations will phase out the aged and explosion-prone DOT-111 tanker cars that are hauling endless streams of highly flammable crude oil through Rockland and Westchester counties and lead to commonsense safety measures — like speed limits, new braking controls and standards for a safer tank car — that will further safeguard local communities,” Schumer said.

A newer-model tank car known as the CPC-1232 features many of the higher standards the DOT is seeking but they are not invincible. On April 30, a 105-car CSX oil train derailed in Lynchburg, Va.  Several of the 17 tank cars that went off the track fell into the James River, and a CPC-1232 spilled about 30,000 gallons of Bakken crude oil, causing a massive fire. No one was injured.

The National Transportation Safety Board, which raised issues about the DOT-111s several years ago, said it has concerns about the newer tank cars.

“We have found that the 1232 is also not as robust as is needed,” NTSB spokesman Eric Weiss said.

Alon USA Energy, Bakersfield CA, Crude By Rail

Oil-by-rail project for shut California refinery near approval

Repost from Reuters
[Editor: Significant quote: “…proposals have faced lengthy delays for comprehensive environmental reviews, public input, and revisions.  Valero Energy Corp, the largest U.S. refiner, postponed its plans to send crude by rail to its San Francisco-area refinery because of such delays, and withdrew permit applications for a similar project at its Los Angeles plant….’I think Bakersfield is probably the best place to build a rail facility in California, because it’s not sitting in San Francisco or LA, and it has access to pipes going north and south. It just seems like it’s going to be a struggle to develop rail in other locations,’ Plains’ Chief Operating Officer Harry Pefanis told analysts in May.”  – RS]

Oil-by-rail project for shut California refinery near approval

Kristen Hays, August 15 2014

(Reuters) – The first new crude-by-rail project at a California refinery is likely to win approval next month after more than a year of scrutiny, the head of the Kern County planning division told Reuters, and it could help reopen the shuttered plant.

The facility at independent refiner Alon USA Energy Inc’s Bakersfield plant would increase crude offloading capacity to 140,000 barrels per day from its current 13,000 bpd and open up significant access to cheaper inland U.S. and Canadian crudes.

Alon’s Bakersfield plant is in Kern County, home to about 65 percent of all California oil production, where crude has been produced for more than a century.

Alon shut the 70,000 bpd Bakersfield refinery in late 2012 because its reliance on more expensive imports and lack of access to other crudes without significant rail rendered the plant unprofitable.

Other California refiners also struggle with profitability because of reliance on expensive imported crude and costly fuel manufacturing regulations in the biggest gasoline market in the country.

“We’re supportive of what Alon is doing with this refinery,” said Lorelei Oviatt, director of the county’s planning and community development department. “This refinery is not operating at full capacity. We would like to see this refinery operating at full capacity.”

Alon didn’t respond to requests for comment.

The Alon project is among several proposed at California refineries, some of which face growing opposition in light of a spate of crude train crashes in the past year as the U.S. oil boom sent amounts of crude moving by train soaring.

The worst by far was in Quebec in July last year when a runaway crude train exploded in the town of Lac-Megantic, killing 47 people.

Several California refiners, largely isolated by the Rocky Mountains from the growing cheap bounty from oilfields in Texas, North Dakota and Canada, want to tap those sources via rail because no major pipelines carry crude from those areas into the Golden State, nor are any planned.

More than half of the 1.7 million barrels of crude processed by California refiners each day is imported.

But proposals have faced lengthy delays for comprehensive environmental reviews, public input, and revisions.

Valero Energy Corp, the largest U.S. refiner, postponed its plans to send crude by rail to its San Francisco-area refinery because of such delays, and withdrew permit applications for a similar project at its Los Angeles plant.

Kinder Morgan Energy Partners operates the state’s most substantial oil-by-rail facility at a terminal in Richmond, which handles up to 72,000 bpd. Local planners last year approved, without an environmental review, a revised ethanol offloading permit to allow the terminal to handle crude. But opponents are suing to temporarily shut it down and force that kind of review.

Tesoro Corp faces similar growing opposition for a 360,000-bpd railport project in southwest Washington state that could ship crude to California refineries by tanker.

That could let California refiners – which includes Tesoro’s Los Angeles-area plant – replace more than 40 percent of more expensive imported oil with North American crudes if all of it were shipped to the state.

Alon is considering possibly leaving the Bakersfield refinery shut and running the facility as a rail and logistics terminal.

If the refinery remains shut, the rail operation would be similar to a separate 70,000-bpd oil-by-rail facility Plains All American plans to open in October and eventually expand to 140,000 bpd. That project was approved two years ago before it was acquired by Plains.

Alon bought the Bakersfield plant out of bankruptcy in 2010 from Flying J Inc, which had shut it in early 2009 shortly after seeking bankruptcy protection. Alon restarted the hydrocracker in the summer of 2011, but operational problems led to more shutdowns and startups.

David Hackett, president of Stillwater Associates, a refining consultancy in Irvine, California, said the refinery’s spotty operational history may better support a future as a rail hub.

“They haven’t run it as a refinery in a long time. I don’t think they’ll restart Bakersfield, and I don’t understand why they didn’t pull this off two years ago,” he said.

ESTABLISHED OIL HUB

Bakersfield sits in the center of the state’s oil production where the oil industry is long established. Plains executives have said its crude-friendly climate and existing infrastructure make the area more attractive for such projects.

“I think Bakersfield is probably the best place to build a rail facility in California, because it’s not sitting in San Francisco or LA, and it has access to pipes going north and south. It just seems like it’s going to be a struggle to develop rail in other locations,” Plains’ Chief Operating Officer Harry Pefanis told analysts in May.

Alon had hoped to have its Bakersfield rail project up and running by the end of 2013, but it, like others in the state, underwent a lengthy environmental review and public comment.

Oviatt said the Kern County planning department had considered all issues during that review, including safety and spill preparedness.

Now the project is slated to go before the county’s board of supervisors for a vote at a Sept. 9 public hearing. Oviatt, who is not one of the five members of the board, said she expected a final decision at that time.

The planning department has signed off on it, and Oviatt said the board tended to be supportive of business.

“I can’t say how the board would vote, but I do believe that given their business-friendly attitude, they’re going to take all of this into serious consideration.”

(Reporting by Kristen Hays in Houston; Editing by Terry Wade, Lisa Shumaker, Jessica Resnick-Ault and Phil Berlowitz)
Bakken Crude, Crude By Rail, DOT-111, Federal Regulation (U.S.), Take Action

Bainbridge Island Review Guest Opinion: Why I blockaded an oil train

Repost from the Bainbridge Island Review

GUEST OPINION: Why I blockaded an oil train

BY ANNETTE KLAPSTEIN, August 16, 2014

On Monday, July 28, I joined Jan Woodruff of Anacortes and Adam Gaya of Seattle in locking ourselves to barrels full of concrete on the rail spur into the Tesoro refinery in Anacortes in order to keep an oil train from leaving the refinery.

Why would a 62-year-old retired lawyer and long-time resident of Bainbridge Island take such a drastic action?

The short answer is: I could not do otherwise.

This kind of resistance may seem extreme, but these are extreme times — these oil trains present an imminent threat to the lives and safety of tens of thousands of our friends and neighbors, and our politicians have done a woefully inadequate job of addressing this.

The puncture-prone DOT-111 tanker cars were deemed “inadequate” by federal authorities more than 20 years ago. Yet every week, more than a dozen of these trains travel through downtown Seattle to refineries including Tesoro.

These trains are carrying Bakken shale crude, which the DOT has warned is unusually volatile and can catch fire at temperatures as low as 75 degrees F!

There have been very frequent derailments, including one in Seattle last week (headed for the Tesoro refinery), which occurred despite a train speed of only 5 miles per hour. Had it been going much faster, the results would likely have been catastrophic.

There have been five explosions and massive fires associated with derailments within the past year, the worst being at Lac-Megantic, Quebec, where a derailment caused a massive explosion, leveling several city blocks and vaporizing 47 people. If this happens in Seattle near the sports stadiums during a Seahawks or Mariners game, tens of thousands of people will die a horrific death.

Tesoro had a terrible safety record even before the huge increase in oil-by-rail.

After its tragic 2010 fire, which killed seven workers, it was found to have committed 39 “willful” and five “serious” violations of safety regulations.

Tesoro is planning to build the massive Tesoro Savage Vancouver Oil Terminal, a project so fraught with potential problems that the Vancouver City Council has asked Governor Inslee to reject it.

The United States Supreme Court, in its questionable wisdom, has declared corporations to be “persons” with human rights. If Tesoro and the other oil companies trying to turn our beautiful state of Washington into the Bakken shale oil dealer to the world are “persons” it is terribly clear to me what sort of “persons” they are: psychopaths — lacking all conscience or empathy. If any other group of people exposed us to such risks, they’d be locked up as the criminals they are. Instead, we get cheap bromides about “safe fracking,” while wells across the country are poisoned and billions of gallons of water in drought-stricken California are ruined: all for cheap dirty energy, in an era when the ravages of climate change are becoming increasingly visible.

The fires in Washington last week were one small sample of ominous things to come. In under a week of the official fire season, more area was burned than in any full year of the past decade. If we do not take drastic measures to address climate change immediately, our children and grandchildren will have to live through the collapse of our civilization within decades. I cannot live with that on my conscience.

And what has our political leadership offered to address these issues? Feeble and half-hearted actions such as the federal plan to “phase out” the most unsafe oil-by-rail cars over the next four years.

In four years we are certain to have more disasters and more deaths — such a plan is criminally negligent and absolutely unacceptable.

We need a total ban on all shipment of Bakken crude by rail NOW, and a complete halt to the development of any new oil terminals in the Pacific Northwest.

The oil companies have no sense of responsibility to anything but their bottom lines. Companies that make decisions like this have no place doing business on our increasingly fragile planet, and we the people of the state of Washington have to draw the line.

Annette Klapstein is a Bainbridge Island resident and a retired attorney who worked for the Puyallup Indian Tribe for 21 years, primarily on fisheries issues.