Railway Supply Institute: Ethanol dependent on old-style tank cars
1 Aug 2014
Houston — The US ethanol industry is particularly vulnerable to pending regulatory changes that will require retrofitting or retiring a type of railcar that carries 98pc of ethanol production.
In comments to the US Department of Transportation’s (DOT) planned changes to tank car design released last week, the Railway Supply Institute (RSI) said about 29,200 of the approximately 29,780 tank cars moving ethanol as of June were doing so in unjacketed old-style DOT-111 tank cars. Those cars must be retrofitted or retired under the proposed rules.
Jackets add another layer of steel to the tank, increasing overall protection. They are an option to retrofit DOT-111s to make them safer.
DOT-111 cars have been under renewed scrutiny since several exploded into flames in a July 2013 derailment at Lac-Megantic, Quebec, killing 47 people. Four more fiery crude-by-rail accidents since then spun regulators in both the US and Canada into action on car design.
But it was an ethanol train derailment in June 2009 that spurred the first wave of action. The Cherry Valley, Illinois, accident killed one person and prompted industry to voluntarily strengthen car design in 2011, creating the current industry standard known as CPC-1232.
But despite the reliance on older DOT-111s to move ethanol, documentation from the Surface Transportation Board and the Pipeline and Hazardous Material Safety Administration shows there was only one ethanol-by-rail accident last year — with no release or fire — compared with five crude-by-rail accidents.
The last reported US ethanol-by-rail accident involving a fire was in August 2012 at Plevna, Montana, when 17 cars derailed and 12 spilled more than 245,000 USG.
According to RSI’s comments to the DOT, which were released last week along with a series of proposals on new speed limits and tank car design for flammable liquids, 580 tank cars either of the newer CPC-1232 model or jacketed DOT-111s were moving ethanol in June, making up 2pc of the fleet.
Meanwhile, of the 42,550 tank cars moving crude in June, 19,750 either were newer-model CPC-1232 or DOT-111 with jacketing, accounting for 46pc.
“Our industry’s rapid expansion occurred in 2005-2006-2007, and the only cars made available were the [DOT-111] cars, which were purchased or leased with the expectation of a 40- or 50-year lifespan,” Bob Dinneen, chief executive of the Renewable Fuels Association, told Argus. “When you started to see a lot more crude oil moving from the Bakken, by then the [CPC-1232] cars were being made available, so they were lucky to get those cars.”
DOT last week suggested that DOT-111 tank cars be retired after two years, to be replaced either by a more stringent design it has proposed, another proposed by the Association of American Railroads that is largely similar except that it lacks electronically controlled pneumatic brakes, or continuation of the current CPC-1232 design.
The initial regulatory push is too broad-brush and should be more focused on crude, Dinneen said.
“They ought to be prioritizing by the commodity about which, by their own admission, they are most concerned,” Dinneen said, referring to light crude. Conversely, the American Petroleum Institute chastised the government for singling out Bakken crude, which it said is no more volatile than other grades.
Yesterday, railcar lessor GATX also called for a more commodity-based approach to the DOT-111 phase-out, saying it is not currently clear what markets DOT-111s might serve once they are banned from crude or ethanol use.
Repost from Emergency Management Magazine [Editor: Note the source of this article. From the “About” page: “Emergency Management is the award-winning, all-hazards publication of record for emergency management, public safety and homeland security stakeholders charged to protect our communities, critical infrastructure and the security of our nation.” – RS]
States Focus on Rail and Energy Pipeline Safety
Sharp increases in U.S. oil production have caused safety problems transporting the liquid. Now states are trying to fix the problem.
Jeffrey Stinson, Stateline | July 31, 2014
The sharp increase in U.S. oil production and its promise of energy independence is coming with a disastrous byproduct: spills that threaten lives, communities and the environment.
In the past 18 months, about 1.2 million gallons of crude oil produced in the U.S. or Canada has been spilled from train cars and pipelines in at least seven states, sparking explosions, fires, or the evacuation of homes or offices in four instances.
Nobody has to tell the residents of Lynchburg, Virginia about the danger of the millions of gallons of crude oil rolling along rail lines or through pipelines every day. On April 30, more than a dozen train cars filled with crude oil derailed near Lynchburg’s downtown, causing a fire that forced hundreds of people in a 20-block area to evacuate. Nobody was injured, but thousands of gallons of oil spilled into the James River.
In response to the growing problem, the U.S. Department of Transportation last week issued proposed rules calling for upgraded railroad cars, better braking systems and tighter speed controls.
The federal action followed stepped-up efforts by several states to try to prevent spills and respond to disasters:
The California legislature last month approved a new 6.5-cent fee on every barrel on crude oil carried by rail and some pipelines through the state. The state will use the money, estimated to bring in $11 million in the first full year, to expand its coastal spill prevention and response program to inland streams, rivers, lakes and wetlands. It’s also beefing up its rail safety inspection program.
Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton, a Democrat, signed legislation in May to implement stricter oversight of railroad companies, require more rail inspections and provide for better emergency response training and preparedness. To pay for it, Minnesota this year will collect $6.4 million in fees from railroads and pipeline companies.
New Hampshire Gov. Maggie Hassan, a Democrat, signed legislation earlier this month that authorizes the state to impose stricter preparation and response requirements on pipelines than federal law requires. The state Public Utility Commission also was given authority to inspect interstate pipelines to provide more frequent checks than federal officials give.
Oregon Democratic Gov. John Kitzhaber last week released a study of oil moving through his state that calls for more state rail inspectors, more money for training and improved cooperation with railroads. Last month, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, a Democrat, ordered a similar review of risks, regulations and preparedness in his state. In January, New York Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo also issued a similar order and dispatched inspectors to rail yards to look for defects on cars that could cause derailments.
Nearly all the action in the states was prompted by disasters governors and lawmakers saw in other states or across the border in Canada. Their worst fear is what happened in Lac-Megantic, Quebec, where 47 people were killed last July when an unattended 74-car train derailed. The spilled crude caught fire, then several cars exploded and about half the downtown was destroyed.
“I want to know how much oil will be shipped through my state and how we can be assured the kind of tragedy that happened in Quebec won’t devastate families in our communities,” Inslee said last month in ordering the study in Washington.
Matt Swenson, Dayton’s press secretary, said Minnesotans only needed to look at neighboring North Dakota to see what could happen: Last December, a train carrying grain derailed in front of a mile-long train carrying crude oil near Casselton, not far from the Minnesota border. Twenty cars spilled oil, some exploded. Fire forced evacuation of the town, but nobody was injured.
Every day, seven similar oil trains with about 110 cars carrying about 3.3 million gallons of crude travel through Minnesota, the state said. Other states are witnessing similar traffic, and it’s on the rise.
About 264 million gallons of crude oil were shipped by rail through California last year, said Alexia Retallack in the state Fish and Wildlife Department’s Office of Spill Prevention and Response. That’s 46.2 million gallons more than in 2012.
Railroads Pick Up Slack
More crude oil is on the move across states as production in North America booms from the fracking of Bakken oil deposits underlying North Dakota, Montana, and Canada’s Saskatchewan and Manitoba provinces, and from the tar sands of Alberta.
Production in the U.S. alone will be 8.5 million barrels a day this year, the U.S. Energy Information Administration estimates. That’s estimated to grow to 9.3 million barrels daily next year. And there aren’t enough pipelines to get the crude to the nation’s 115 refineries to be turned into gasoline and other products.
Republican North Dakota Gov. Jack Dalrymple said last month that pipeline capacity in his state needs to double to about 1.4 million barrels a day by 2016 to carry all the crude produced there. Currently, the state is producing about 220,000 barrels a day more than pipes can carry.
Railroads are picking up the slack, even though the Congressional Research Service said in a May report that it can cost from $5 to $10 more a barrel than pipeline delivery. The number of carloads of crude oil, each carrying about 30,000 gallons, that ended up inside the U.S. rose to 435,560 last year, the Association of American Railroads says. That’s up from about 30,000 in 2010.
In a recent analysis of data from the federal Pipeline and Hazardous Material Safety Administration, the McClatchy News Service found that 1.15 million gallons of crude oil spilled from rail cars in the U.S. last year. That’s more than in all the years combined since the data was first collected nearly four decades ago.
The worst accident was in November in Aliceville, Alabama, where 748,800 gallons spilled from a 90-car train after 12 cars derailed and three exploded. Nobody was injured.
Although widely considered safer than rail shipment of crude, pipelines do spill. A split in a pipeline in March 2013 dumped as much as 5,000 barrels of Canadian tar sands oil into a neighborhood in Mayflower, Arkansas.
Concern over pipeline spills is what drove New Hampshire state Sen. Jeff Woodburn to sponsor the legislation giving his state greater control over pipelines. The source of worry is that the 236-mile Portland-Montreal Pipeline, built to carry conventional crude oil from Maine, through New Hampshire and Vermont to Canadian refineries, can instead be used to ship to the U.S. tar sands oil, which is heavier and dirtier.
A spill, Woodburn, a Democrat, said, could devastate the fragile environment in his northern area of the state, which attracts tourists.
An analysis of federal spill data by the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research last year found that through 2009, pipelines released more oil per spill than rail. Even with the recent increase in oil transported by rail, pipelines still carry much more. Furthermore, because pipelines often run through isolated areas, it often takes longer to get to the site of a leak and seal it.
But there’s a difference between pipeline spills and rail car spills, said Carl Weimer, a Whatcom County, Washington, commissioner and executive director of the Pipeline Safety Trust that studies and advocates for greater pipeline safety.
Pipelines may spill more oil when an accident happens, Weimer said, but they usually cause mostly environmental damage because they’re located in out-of-the-way places. Railroads travel through populated areas and their spills can endanger more people and cause greater property damage.
“The real question is: Is either one as safe as they need to be?” Weimer said. “I don’t think they are.”
Lighter and Sweeter
The nature of much of the oil being shipped is heightening states’ concerns. Bakken crude is a lighter, sweeter crude that federal regulators say may be more flammable than other crude – though the American Petroleum Institute that represents the oil and gas industry disputes that.
Bakken crude was involved in the fiery crashes in Virginia, North Dakota, Alabama and in Quebec.
The new proposed federal rules are largely aimed at Bakken crude. Older rail tanker cars will be banned from shipping it across the states within two years unless they’re retrofitted with thicker skins and anti-rollover protection to meet the newest standards.
At present, the freight railroad industry says it uses about 92,000 tank cars to carry flammable liquids, such as crude, and that 18,000 are built to the latest standards.
The Association of American Railroads says the industry already has moved to reduce speeds on oil trains with 20 or more cars carrying crude and include at least one older tank car to no faster than 40 mph in 46 urban areas around the country.
Federal regulators are weighing whether they should go even slower, possibly 40 mph in all areas and 30 mph in urban areas. But the association, which represents major carriers, said going just 30 mph in urban areas could cost it 10 percent of its capacity to ship cargo, and slow down some freight and Amtrak passenger trains traveling across parts of the country.
Railroads also are alerting states when and where trains carrying 1 million gallons or more of Bakken crude will travel in keeping with a May 15 order from the U.S. Department of Transportation. And they’ve said they’ll work with the states and communities on any new spill response efforts just as they have so far.
“We take our responsibility for moving oil in a safe and efficient manner seriously,” the railroad association said. “That is why the rail industry is working with our customers, suppliers and (federal regulators) to find ways to make a safe network even safer.”
That’s what states say they’re doing, too, as they know their citizens need the energy and at a reasonable price.
“We need to move crude oil,” said California’s Retallack. “But we need to do it in a way that doesn’t pose risks to citizens or the environment.”
Or, as Sen. Woodburn of New Hampshire put it: “We want to be accepting to changes and challenges on the energy front – but we want to be in the driver’s seat.”
This article was originally published by Stateline. Stateline is a nonpartisan, nonprofit news service of the Pew Charitable Trusts that provides daily reporting and analysis on trends in state policy.
Repost from Vice News [Editor: The best-yet video on oil by rail – an excellent 23-minute documentary on the North American crisis in oil production and transport. Primary coverage of dangers in the Pacific Northwest, but also giving an overview of the massive increase in Bakkan production, DOT-111 rail cars and industry lobbying against federal and local attempts to regulate. Highly recommended. To embed this video elsewhere go to its Youtube location. – RS]
Bomb Trains: The Crude Gamble of Oil by Rail
It’s estimated that 9 million barrels of crude oil are moving over the rail lines of North America at any given moment. Oil trains charging through Virginia, North Dakota, Alabama, and Canada’s Quebec, New Brunswick, and Alberta provinces have derailed and exploded, resulting in severe environmental damage and, in the case of Quebec, considerable human casualties.
A continental oil boom and lack of pipeline infrastructure have forced unprecedented amounts of oil onto US and Canadian railroads. With 43 times more oil being hauled along US rail lines in 2013 than in 2005, communities across North America are bracing for another catastrophe.
VICE News traveled to the Pacific Northwest to investigate the rapid expansion of oil-by-rail transport and speak with residents on the frontline of the battle over bomb trains.
Repost from The San Francisco Chronicle [Editor: (apologies for the commercial content…the video that follows the commercial is well worth the wait.) The following San Francisco Chronicle article on Positive Train Control is incredibly important. Until California is fully covered by a state-of-the-art collision-avoidance system, Valero should not be issued a use permit for crude by rail. Significant quote from the article: “In the four-plus decades since the federal safety board began urging that the technology be installed, 139 crashes that could have been prevented with collision-avoidance systems have occurred on U.S. rail lines, resulting in 288 deaths and 6,500 injuries, according to internal records of the safety agency examined by Hearst Newspapers.” – RS]
System can prevent train accidents, rail industry slow to adopt
New technology prevents accidents, but rail industry is dragging its feet
Bill Lambrecht, July 27, 2014
Jake Miille/Special to The Chronicle | A procession of tanker cars transporting Bakken crude oil travels on a railroad line near James (Butte County).
Faced with a huge increase in hazardous oil-carrying trains, California is urging quicker implementation of technology that would prevent train accidents caused by human error. But after pushing back against the idea for nearly half a century, the rail industry is far from ready to adopt the safety measure.
The technology monitors and controls train movements with a digital communications network that links locomotives with control centers. It’s designed to prevent collisions by automatically slowing or stopping errant trains that are going too fast, miss stop signals, enter zones with maintenance workers on the track or encounter other dangers.
Yet 45 years after the National Transportation Safety Board first recommended such a system, the technology, known as positive train control or PTC, operates only on a tiny slice of America’s rail network – including a segment of the Metrolink commuter rail line in Southern California, which has become a leader in adopting the technology after a crash near Chatsworth (Los Angeles County) killed 25 people and injured 102 in 2008. It is also coming soon to Caltrain in the South Bay and on the Peninsula.
In the four-plus decades since the federal safety board began urging that the technology be installed, 139 crashes that could have been prevented with collision-avoidance systems have occurred on U.S. rail lines, resulting in 288 deaths and 6,500 injuries, according to internal records of the safety agency examined by Hearst Newspapers.
During that time, the safety agency issued 75 PTC-related recommendations – formal advice to the industry and its federal regulator that has grown increasingly strident.
Railroad resistance
But the Hearst investigation found that even after early successes with the technology, its development has met continuous resistance from railroads unwilling to sacrifice profits for the safety that the system would provide.
The Federal Railroad Administration, charged with regulating the U.S. rail system, has frequently defied the safety board’s recommendations to install PTC. At times, it has joined with industry to push back against implementation.
Finally, shortly after the Chatsworth accident, in which one of the engineers was distracted while texting, Congress passed legislation mandating the installation of the control system on key portions of the nation’s rail network by the end of 2015.
Caltrain and Metrolink are among the few commuter lines in the country that say they expect to meet that deadline. But rising concern about trains hauling crude in the North American oil boom has put California at odds with the federal government about the pace of PTC and railroad safety in general.
Ten derailments
Since last year, 10 oil trains have derailed in the U.S. and Canada, including the catastrophic wreck a year ago in Quebec that killed 47 people in the small town of Lac-Mégantic.
The amount of oil arriving into California by rail jumped last year by 506 percent to 6.3 million barrels, a state interagency working group on rail safety reported last month.
The report predicted that by 2016, the amount of crude oil coming to California by train could increase by 150 million barrels if California’s five major refineries operate at capacity.
California recently learned that a Burlington Northern Santa Fe crude-carrying train is making weekly runs through the Feather River Canyon, into downtown Sacramento and south to Stockton, before ending up at the Tesoro refinery outside Martinez.
State officials are raising an array of concerns with the federal government about the sluggishness of implementation of the safety measures.
Congress and the Federal Railroad Administration are proposing delays in PTC deadlines, but the report last month from nine California agencies recommended just the opposite: accelerating the installation.
Heading off disaster
“We’re trying to do something before an accident happens instead of looking at a catastrophe and figure out how it could have been prevented,” said Kelly Huston, deputy director of the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services. “A train with better technology to prevent it colliding with another train is safer than a train that doesn’t have that technology.”
Metrolink began running the collision-avoidance technology earlier this year on the line that runs from Los Angeles to Riverside.
“Our biggest challenge has been the fact that we’re out front as much as we are, so we’re the ones experiencing the bugs,” said Metrolink spokesman Jeff Lustgarten.
“The deadline was seven years out,” he added. “It wasn’t as if it were an unreasonable deadline.”
Caltrain is installing its $231 million safety system along the San Francisco-to-Gilroy line.
The Government Accountability Office and rail safety advocates have questioned whether the Federal Railroad Administration is prepared for the inspections and approvals for PTC. Caltrain echoes those concerns.
“I think they will be challenged from a resource point of view to get this done, and it seems likely that that is going to be a constraint on all of us,” said Karen Antion, a consultant who is directing Caltrain’s transition to the system.
Human factor
The collision-avoidance technology is designed to minimize the number of train disasters caused by human error, the cause of roughly 40 percent of derailments.
In the 1980s, Burlington Northern, plagued by a series of fatal accidents, was the first to act on a recommendation that the National Transportation Safety Board had issued nearly two decades before, calling on railroads to adopt an avoidance system. The railroad’s technology plotted the speed and positions of trains within 30 feet. If trains got too close and an engineer didn’t slow after warnings flashed on a locomotive computer screen, the system took over.
It became more than an experiment: For five years, Burlington Northern’s system operated on 17 locomotives on 300 miles of tracks in Minnesota. There were no accidents.
“All of the components worked as expected,” said Steven Ditmeyer, who was Burlington Northern’s research director at the time. “We had acceptance by train crews, dispatchers and maintenance people. There was no fear of the system and people could see its benefits.”
Momentum lost
The federal safety board soon turned up the heat, advising the Federal Railroad Administration in the early 1990s to establish a “firm timetable” for installing train control along America’s tracks.
But the opposite occurred. The 1990s were a time of upheaval in the industry, with mergers set in motion by deregulation. Amid the reorganizing and subsequent cost-cutting, railroads lost interest in train control.
In 1993, the Association of American Railroads prepared a 91-page study that laid out a case for benefits of the technology beyond avoiding wrecks: savings in fuel and labor costs, better traffic control, a means to monitor the condition of locomotives and “a better-rested and safer workforce.”
But rather than use the study to rally its members, the leaders of the railroad trade group ordered the study destroyed. The railroad association argued in 1995 that the new technology “must be justified on the basis of safety benefits only.”
The Federal Railroad Administration went along with what the industry wanted. Ditmeyer headed the agency’s Office of Research and Development after being deeply involved with the Burlington Northern project. In 1996, he testified at a congressional hearing that technical issues with the system still needed to be addressed.
In a recent interview, Ditmeyer recalled that testimony as “one of the things I regret most in my life. … I was forced to say it was not ready to implement.”
Congress acts
After 9/11, the railroads’ focus shifted to protecting against terrorist attacks, and collision-avoidance technology was pushed even further down the priority list.
Finally, after the Chatsworth crash, Congress passed a measure requiring implementation of PTC and President George W. Bush signed it into law. But the delays were far from over.
In 2010, the Association of American Railroads filed suit challenging federal rules for installing the new technology, arguing that “while the costs of PTC are tremendous, the benefits are relatively few.” Four years later, the suit drags on.
Michael Rush, associate general counsel of the Association of American Railroads, said his members are committed to the technology, but that key components are still in a developmental stage.
“It is a work in progress. We’re trying to do something that’s not been done before,” he said.
In the run-up to the 2015 deadline, Americans don’t have the opportunity to measure progress in installing the technology. The federal railroad agency rejected a National Transportation Safety Board recommendation to post railroads’ updates online.
“To publish this information would likely mislead and confuse the public,” agency administrator Joseph Szabo said in a letter, adding that it would “waste valuable agency resources.”
Robert Sumwalt, a member of the federal safety board, said in an interview that the railroad agency’s “response to this was, frankly, appalling.”
Drop in accidents
The railroad agency defends its safety record, pointing to a 50 percent drop in rail accidents over the past decade. The agency also touts a voluntary agreement that went into effect July 1 under which oil trains reduce speed in urban areas and take pains to identify routes with the fewest risks.
The Federal Railroad Administration favors a plan to deal with railroads’ plans to install the safety system incrementally, not setting any overall deadline. Testifying at a Senate hearing this spring, Szabo said the open-ended plan would set milestones for individual railroads and “achieve the benefit of PTC as much as possible as soon as possible.”
Other proposals in Congress would delay the technology beyond 2015.
“Pure trouble” is how Grady Cothen, the agency’s former associate administrator for safety, sums up the agency’s open-ended deadline proposal. “There is a place for FRA discretion, but there has to be a framework,” he said.
Sumwalt said he and other federal safety board members “were feeling good” after Congress ordered the collision-avoidance technology six years ago.
“And now we’re finding that it’s going to be delayed even further,” he said. “It’s frustrating to see accidents continue to happen that we know PTC would have prevented.”
This story has been corrected since it appeared in print editions.
Bill Lambrecht is a reporter in the Hearst Newspapers Washington bureau.
