Andrew Maykuth, March 13, 2015, 1:08 AM
Recent oil train derailments have increased pressure on the federal government to improve safety standards. (REUTERS/Rick Wilking)
Philadelphia City Council on Thursday urged the federal government to tighten regulations on trains carrying crude oil, in the aftermath of a series of fiery derailments.
City Council unanimously approved a resolution that calls on Washington to approve new rules for railcars. It also calls for the city to plan emergency-response workshops for communities along oil-train routes.
Philadelphia-area oil refineries have become increasingly dependent upon rail shipments of domestic crude oil, which has displaced more expensive imported oil delivered by ships.
Two major freight carriers, CSX and Norfolk Southern, now move from 45 to 80 oil trains through Philadelphia each week, according to city officials.
The U.S. Department of Transportation sets rules governing railroad safety and railcar standards, so Council’s action is symbolic.
“With the increase of train traffic in Philadelphia, we are flirting with disaster,” said Councilman Kenyatta Johnson, the resolution’s sponsor.
Environmental groups including Clean Water Action, Delaware Riverkeeper Network, and PennEnvironment have lobbied Johnson’s office to take action since a CSX oil train last year derailed on a bridge near Center City. The accident caused no leaks, but the sight of oil cars tilted over the Schuylkill drew much attention to the issue.
Last month’s accident in West Virginia – one of five in recent weeks – has inspired a surge in calls for action.
The Federal Railroad Administration and the U.S. Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration last year issued several emergency orders and advisories to address safety issues. The government is also considering new rules to phase out old tank car designs, though several of the most recent explosive derailments involved newer-model tank cars.
Repost from The Financial Post [Editor: Read this if you want to hear rail and transportation managers squirm. Best quote: “If you ship 10 times as much crude oil, you’ll get 10 times more derailments.” To which one might answer, “Yep.” – RS]
Recent train derailments are not a sign of deteriorating safety record, say analysts
By Kristine Owram, Mar 12 5:42 PM ET
Four separate oil trains — two in Ontario and two in the United States — have derailed and caught fire in the past month and in each case the tank cars met what are supposed to be tougher, safer standards. THE CANADIAN PRESS/HO – Glenn Thibeault
A recent spate of train derailments is not a sign that the industry’s safety record is deteriorating, but is rather “the bad luck of the stats,” analysts say.
A Canadian National Railway Co. train derailed near Brandon, Man., on Wednesday night, joining two other high-profile incidents involving CN trains in less than a month.
CN spokesman Brent Kossey said the cars were carrying refinery cracking stock, a non-regulated commodity that’s used in the petroleum refining process. One of the 13 cars that derailed sprung a leak, but there was no fire.
This is in contrast to two CN derailments near the community of Gogama, Ont., in the past month, both of which were carrying crude oil and caught fire. There have also been two fiery oil-train derailments in the U.S. since mid-February — one a BNSF Railway Co. train in northern Illinois and the other a CSX Corp. train in West Virginia.
It sounds like an alarming trend but analysts say it’s simply the inevitable result of the growing volumes of crude transported by rail, as well as increased scrutiny of the industry following the Lac-Mégantic, Que., disaster in 2013.
“Last year was the safest year on record,” Tony Hatch, principal at railway consulting firm ABH Consulting, said in an interview. “I think what you’re seeing is intense scrutiny and the bad luck of the stats.”
According to the National Energy Board, the volume of Canadian crude-by-rail exports has increased by 1,000% in less than three years, from 1.45 million barrels in the first quarter of 2012 to 15.95 million in the fourth quarter of 2014.
“If you ship 10 times as much crude oil, you’ll get 10 times more derailments,” Allan Zarembski, director of the railroad engineering and safety program at the University of Delaware, said in an interview.
He added that an oil-train is no more likely to derail than any other type of train.
“The oil trains aren’t heavier than a coal train or an iron-ore train or even a grain train,” he said.
“They’re all loaded to the same range, they don’t travel any faster — in fact, they travel somewhat slower than the heavy intermodal trains. There’s no particular reason why you should have more derailments associated with an oil train.”
The industry’s safety record has been steadily improving over the last several years thanks to new technology, said Russell Quimby, a former rail safety engineer with the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board and president of Quimby Consulting.
“In the last 20 years, the amount of detection and inspection technology introduced and implemented is tremendous,” Mr. Quimby said. “The accident statistics reflect that.”
According to the Transportation Safety Board, a total of 83 main-track derailments were reported in 2013, down 6% from the five-year average.
Transport Canada is also working to reduce the risk of fires and spills. The agency proposed Wednesday a new standard for the tank cars used to ship crude that will include thicker steel, insulation to protect the contents from fire and a shield to guard against punctures, among other things. If the measures are approved, older tank cars will be phased out by 2025.
“While we have already banned the least crash-resistant tank cars from the system and came out last year with tougher new regulations, we will continue to do more,” Transport Minister Lisa Raitt said in a statement. The minister has also called on CN to testify before the Transport Committee about the recent derailments.
But as long as crude is being shipped by rail, there will always be a risk of fiery derailments, Mr. Quimby said.
“You want to have zero accidents,” Mr. Quimby said. “It’s like flying. Statistically, flying is safer than driving but it’s not safer if you happen to be in the airplane that goes down.”
Crude by rail unsafe; Valero should withdraw its application
To the Editor of The Benicia Herald, and published there on Mar. 12:
Many thanks to Dr. James Egan for his thoughtful letter of March 10, “Timely decision on crude by rail warranted: Deny Valero’s application.” His local voice amplifies a growing national sentiment, that crude by rail is simply too dangerous at this time.
As Mollie Matteson, a senior scientist with the Center for Biological Diversity wrote this week, “Before one more derailment, fire, oil spill and one more life lost, we need a moratorium on oil trains and we need it now. The oil and railroad industries are playing Russian roulette with people’s lives and our environment, and the Obama administration needs to put a stop to it.”
Even as officials in Washington DC are dealing with this crisis (much too slowly), Benicia has a powerful role to play. We can do our part by denying Valero’s permit. In fact, Valero can do its part – by acknowledging the horrendous piling up of recent derailments and explosions, the failing infrastructure and the unsafe tank cars, and withdrawing their application for the time being. That would show real leadership in the oil industry.
Dr. Egan covered most of the issues extremely well, but didn’t mention that the tar-sands crude produced in Alberta Canada has proven volatile on trains as well, with two recent derailments resulting in spills and huge fires within 23 miles of each other outside Gogama, Ontario. Tar-sands crude starts out as a sticky thick bitumen, and must be diluted with volatile and toxic fluids in order to be pumped into rail cars, a mix that can explode and burn just as Bakken crude explodes and burns when a tank car is ruptured. The first train exploded outside Gogama on Feb. 14, and the second on March 7. Those poor folks in Gogama are holding their breath, as the track runs right through town, and the First Nation people who live even closer to the derailments are in shock. Valero has admitted that it wants permission to ship Bakken crude and tar-sands dilbit by train.
In addition to those two crashes in Ontario, we have seen conflagrations in West Virginia on Feb. 16 and in Illinois on Mar. 5. You can’t have missed those. Four “bomb train” explosions in three weeks!
In January 2014, I started a personal blog to keep an eye on crude by rail in the news. At first, there wasn’t much beyond our local efforts to stop Valero’s proposal “in its tracks.” Increasingly, the regional and national media have awakened to the health and safety issues that can destroy communities along the rails. You can’t imagine the absolute flood of media coverage this last three weeks. I can’t keep up anymore. I’m picking and choosing which stories to repost [at BeniciaIndependent.com].
The economy of Benicia may very well take a tumble if Valero’s proposal is permitted: housing values may fall and businesses may look to safer locations and relocate. According to Valero’s own analysis, the few jobs created by introducing oil trains here will be taken up by residents of other Bay Area towns. New hires will spend most of their money where they live, not here in Benicia.
We need to take the long view – Valero can continue to process crude oil brought in on ships. The multi-billion dollar industry will weather this minor setback.
Crude oil train shipments dwindle in California, for now
By Tony Bizjak, 03/11/2015 9:47 PM
A BNSF train carries Bakken crude oil in the hills outside the Feather River Canyon last June. Jake Miille / Special to The Bee
A year ago, California officials nervously braced for an influx of milelong trains carrying volatile crude oil to refineries in the Valley and on the coast – trains similar to the one that exploded two years ago in Canada, killing 47 people.
The trains never arrived. Although tank cars full of oil now roll daily through cities in the Midwest and East, provoking fears of crashes and fires, the number of oil trains entering California has remained surprisingly low, state safety regulators say, no more than a handful a month. In recent weeks, they appear to have dwindled to almost nothing.
The reasons appear to be mainly economic.
“Crude oil shipments from out of state have virtually stopped,” said Paul King, rail safety chief at the California Public Utilities Commission. “Our information is that no crude oil trains are expected for the rest of this month.”
Most notably, the BNSF Railway recently stopped running a 100-car train of volatile oil from the Bakken region of North Dakota through the Feather River Canyon and midtown Sacramento to the Bay Area. The trains, several a month, carried an estimated 3 million gallons of fuel each.
Bakken oil, a lighter type of crude, similar to gasoline, has gained a fearsome reputation since it entered the national scene a few years ago. A string of Bakken train explosions around the country prompted the federal government to issue a warning last year about the oil’s unusual volatility and launch efforts to write stiffer regulations on rail transport, including a proposal to require sturdier tank cars for oil.
Two more Bakken train derailments and explosive fires recently in West Virginia and Illinois triggered a new round of complaints that the federal government is dragging its heels in finalizing those regulations.
The BNSF train through Sacramento was believed to be the only train in California carrying 100 cars of Bakken oil. PUC rail safety deputy director King said his commission’s rail monitors have been told by owners of a Richmond oil transfer station in the Bay Area that refiners stopped the shipments in November as global oil prices dropped.
California Energy Commission fuels specialist Gordon Schremp said lower prices for other types of oil have made Bakken marginally less marketable in California, although that could easily change in the future.
Other projects, like a Valero Refining Co. plan to run two 50-car oil trains daily through Sacramento beginning this spring to its Benicia plant, have not yet gotten off the ground, in part because of political opposition. Under pressure from state officials, including Attorney General Kamala Harris, Benicia recently announced it is redoing part of its environmental and risk analysis of the Valero rail project. Valero has said it intends to ship lighter fuels, but has declined to say whether those will be Bakken.
State safety officials said the slowdown provides a bit more time to provide hazardous-materials training for more firefighters, as well as to put together a state rail-bridge inspection program and to upgrade disaster and waterway spill preparedness. But state officials said they still feel like they’re playing catch-up as they prepare for existing and future potential rail hazards.
“This apparent reprieve may seem helpful, but we still have substantial amounts of … hazardous materials traveling across California’s rail lines,” said Kelly Huston, deputy director of the state Office of Emergency Services. “It only takes one train to create a major disaster.”
Oil prices have begun rising again, and state officials say they expect Bakken shipments to Richmond and potentially elsewhere to be back on track at some point. “We don’t have any concrete info about when it will resume,” the PUC’s King said. “When prices come up, it is likely to resume, and that could be in months.”
Federal emergency rules require railroads to report to states when they run trains carrying more than 1 million gallons of Bakken crude, and then again when that amount changes by 25 percent or more. BNSF sent the state Office of Emergency Services a brief notice on Wednesday acknowledging it had not shipped more than 1 million gallons of Bakken on any train in the last week. The notice does not say how long ago the shipments stopped or when they may resume.
BNSF officials have contended in letters to the state that shipping information is proprietary and should be kept secret. A BNSF spokeswoman declined this week to discuss shipments with The Sacramento Bee, writing in an email, “Information regarding hazardous material shipments is only provided to emergency responders.”
King of the PUC said his monitors estimate that eight or more non-Bakken crude oil trains had been entering the state monthly from Canadian and Colorado oil fields recently, headed to refineries or transfer stations. The Canadian oil, called tar sands, is not considered as explosive as Bakken, but two tar-sands trains derailed and exploded in recent weeks in Ontario, creating fires that lasted several days.
The national concern about crude oil rail shipments follows a boom in domestic oil production, notably in North Dakota, where hydraulic-fracturing advances have freed up immense deposits of shale oil. Lacking pipeline access, North Dakota companies have turned to trains to ship the oil mainly to East and Gulf Coast refineries and to Washington state. Crude by rail shipments in the United States skyrocketed from 9,500 carloads in 2008 to 436,000 in 2013, according to congressional data.
California continues to produce a sizable amount of its own oil in Kern County and receives marine shipments from Alaska and foreign sources. Still, a recent state energy-needs analysis estimates the state could receive as much as 23 percent of its oil via train or barge from continental sources, including North Dakota, Canada, Texas and other Western states, in the coming years. That estimate is based on plans by refineries in Benicia, San Luis Obispo and Kern County to build rail facilities that can accommodate large crude transports.
