Lac-Mégantic property owners receive compensation instalment from Quebec
Presse Canadienne, November 24, 2014
In this July 9, 2013 file photo, workers comb through debris after an oil train derailed and exploded in the town of Lac-Megantic, Quebec, killing 47. | Paul Chiasson / THE CANADIAN PRESS
The provincial government announced Monday that the first instalment of money set aside to compensate owners of buildings destroyed in the explosion and fire in Lac Mégantic has been transferred.
A total of $1.8 million has been sent to the town. A notary will disburse the funds to nine owners. Others will be paid later.
On July 6, 2013, a train belonging to the Montreal, Maine & Atlantic Railway loaded with crude oil rolled unmanned into Lac Mégantic and derailed, causing explosions and fireballs.
This is just the first phase of the payout scheme. Other property owners will be getting cheques totalling $8 million before the end of the year.
In total, the government has earmarked $60 million for the reconstruction and relaunch of the town after the devastating fire that killed 47 people and decimated the downtown area.
Of that $60 million, a maximum of $37 million has been set aside to compensate people whose properties were damaged.
Repost from The Daily Yonder, Speak Your Piece [Editor: Ok, I knew North Dakota regulators were working on regulations to get rid of volatile gases in the crude they ship by train, but I didn’t pay attention: I missed understanding the difference between oil “conditioning” and oil “stabilization.” If Ron Schalow is right, North Dakota officials are far from fixing the problem of volatile crude oil “bomb trains.” This is an important distinction – read on…. – RS]
North Dakota’s Other Oil Boom
North Dakota regulators could lessen the danger of crude-oil explosions that have killed bystanders and damaged property. Instead, the state’s Industrial Commission is likely to allow oil producers to continue shipping dangerous crude across North America when a commonly used fix is possible.
By Ron Schalow, 11/24/2014
A train carrying crude oil killed 47 people when it derained and exploded in Lac-Mégantic, Quebec, in July 2013. | Photo by Paul Chiasson/The Canadian Press
The safety of millions of Americans who live, work or play within a mile of tracks where Bakken oil trains run are in the hands of three mortal men.
Unfortunately, these men make up the North Dakota Industrial Commission.
“It’s a little like the Wild West up in the Bakken, where everybody gets to do what they want to do,” says Myron Goforth, president of Dew Point Control LLC, in Sugarland, Texas. “In the Eagle Ford (Texas shale play), you’ve got to play by the rules, which forces the oil companies to treat it (crude) differently.”
Not in North Dakota, where oil regulators are finally feeling pressure to require the Bakken oil producers to render the trains non-explosive. The push comes six years after the first massive Bakken oil train explosion outside of Luther, Oklahoma, and seven months since the last, in downtown Lynchburg, Virginia, where a quirk of physics turned the exploding tanker cars towards the river, sparing many people and buildings.
Making the trains safer has been possible all along. It seems that politicians in some states don’t want their citizens or towns incinerated, nor do they wish to watch property values drop in the meantime.
Will the North Dakota Industrial Commission act?
Spoiler alert: No.
The Bakken crude needs to be “stabilized,” to remove all explosive “natural gas liquids” such as ethane, propane and butane. That requires billions of dollars in additional equipment and infrastructure, and the oil companies don’t want to pay for it.
Stabilization is a standard practice in many other parts of the United States. And it’s a required part of preparing crude for shipment via pipelines. The explosion risk North Dakota’s lack of regulation imposes on railroad communities all over North America is completely unnecessary. And requiring stabilization would a further boost to the state’s economy. But that’s not enough for the commission.
Instead, the commission is going to sell a different process called “conditioning,” which the oil companies have been doing all along. And conditioning doesn’t do the job, unless you think that job should include towering fireballs, mushroom clouds, charred buildings and graves.
This conditioning lowers the ignition temperature of crude oil—but not by much. It leaves in solution most of the culprit gases, including butane and propane. Even the industry itself says conditioning would not make Bakken crude meaningfully safer for transportation, though it would make the state’s crude more consistent from one well to another.
The only solution for safety is stabilization, which evaporates and re-liquefies nearly all of the petroleum gases for separate delivery to refiners. Stabilization is voluntarily and uniformly practiced in the Eagle Ford formation in Texas.
And, right on cue, on November 13 North Dakota Department of Mineral Resources Director Lynn Helms presented the North Dakota Industrial Commission with proposed new standards (there never were any old standards) to “condition” the Bakken crude, supposedly for the purpose of making the Bakken oil trains non-explosive. Or somewhat less explosive, kinda not explosive, or to get the height of the fireballs down into double digits… I don’t know.
A crude-oil train derailed and exploded in Lynchburg, Virginia, in the spring of 2014. Photo by Elyssa Ezmirly
But, if the goal is to render the Bakken oil trains NON-explosive, the proposal to “condition” the crude isn’t going to cut it.
I repeat, the producers have always “conditioned” the crude, but, evidently, now they’re going to be “forced” by the North Dakota Industrial Commission to turn the knob a few notches to the right, and everything will be peachy.
If it was that simple, perhaps they should have done that before dozens of people got killed – maybe sometime shortly after the first Bakken oil train derailed and blew sky high in 2008.
Commission Chair and North Dakota Governor Jack Dalrymple has so much faith in “conditioning” that his own emergency exercise of a Bakken oil train derailment and explosion estimated 60 casualties in Bismarck or Fargo, both medium-sized cities in North Dakota. One can only guess the number of deaths, if a Bakken train were to jump the rails in Minneapolis or Chicago.
Furthermore, taxpayers are footing the bill for billions to outfit, equip and train firefighters and emergency personnel to deal with a Bakken oil derailment and explosion. Quebec is on the hook for the $2.7 billion disaster in Lac-Megantic, a village of 6,000. That explosion required responses from “more than 1,000 firefighters from 80 different municipalities in Quebec and from six counties in the state of Maine,” according to a report by the Transportation Safety Board of Canada.
How much will it cost your community if tragedy strikes? Will North Dakota pay?
But, there is a bright side. When the next, or the next, or the next Bakken oil train disaster kills more people and decimates a section of Albany or Sacramento or Missoula or Perham, North Dakota can quit worrying about how to spend all of the money piling up in the Bank of North Dakota from oil production revenues. It will be gone to the survivors and a long list of stakeholders.
The loss will be due to willful negligence, disinterest or incompetence on the part of three men.
Ron Schalow lives in Fargo, North Dakota, and is part of the Coalition for Bakken Crude Oil Stabilization.
Repost from 5KPIX TV CBS SF Bay Area [Editor: apologies for the video’s commercial ad. You can pass on choosing an ad – the video will begin if you just wait. – RS]
State Senator Says Bay Area Not Prepared For Crude Oil Trains
Phil Matier talks with state senator Jerry Hill who believes that Bay Area emergency crews are not properly prepared to handle the hundreds of tanker trains bringing shale crude oil from the Dakotas to local refineries. (11/23/14)
Steve Orr, November 20, 2014
A train of crude-oil tank cars passing through the village of Pittsford | (Photo: Steve Orr, Democrat and Chronicle)
About 350 New York state schools, including at least 63 in Monroe County, lie within a mile of railroad tracks used by trains carrying volatile crude oil, a coalition of environmental and other advocacy groups said Thursday.
The groups urged state and federal official to bolster emergency planning at those educational facilities and to require crude-oil trains to travel more slowly near schools.
“We are deeply concerned about the growing number of crude oil rail cars passing through the Hudson Valley and across New York State every day,” said Claire Barnett, executive director of the Albany-based Health Schools Network. “A catastrophic event, should it happen near an occupied school, could devastate a community for a generation or more.”
The good news locally is that districts in Monroe County near CSX Transportation’s two freight-rail corridors say they have emergency plans in place and are prepared to shelter or evacuate in the event that became necessary.
“I’m impressed with what our county schools are doing – on paper. I really am. It sounds fantastic,” said Judy Braiman of Empire State Consumer Project, one of several groups that helped with the report released Thursday.
School officials told Braiman they had fully developed emergency-evacuation plans, and staff in the affected schools were tutored in those plans. Braiman said, though, she could not be sure if that was true of every school. “My only question is, did it get down to the level of the teachers, the parents and the children?” she said.
Rail shipment of crude oil has become a hot-button topic around the country since a surge in shipments from shale-oil fields in the northern Plains. CSX has said 20 to 35 oil trains traverse upstate New York each week, headed for Albany and from there to East Coast refineries.
The shipments raise concern because this particular crude oil is highly volatile. Several oil trains have derailed and caught fire; most tragically, a train rolled downhill out of control and derailed in Lac-Megantic in July 2013, exploding into a huge conflagration that killed 47 people and destroyed several blocks of the small Canadian city’s downtown.
Federal officials say locations within a half-mile of a derailment site should be prepared to evacuate in event of a serious accident, and everyone within a mile could be in danger.
Twenty-six of the 63 Monroe County schools noted by the environment groups are within a half-mile of the tracks, according to data the groups released. Included were schools in the Churchville-Chili, Gates-Chili, Rochester, Penfield, Pittsford, East Rochester and Fairport districts. Several religious-affiliated and charter schools were included as well.
All 63 Monroe schools noted by the groups are near the CSX mainline tracks that run through the city of Rochester and adjoining suburbs. As the Democrat and Chronicle has reported, however, there is evidence that CSX prefers to route oil trains on a separate track that runs through Monroe County’s southern suburbs.
At least four schools located near those tracks are omitted from group’s list and maps, though Braiman said she did contact districts in which those schools are located.
