Category Archives: Federal Regulation (U.S.)

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Protesters dress in hazmat suits at Capitol in Albany, NY

Repost from The Albany Times Union, Capitol Confidential

Environmentalists decry ‘death trains’

 April 15, 2014 by Rick Karlin, Capitol bureau
(Rick Karlin/Times Union)

It sounded a bit like a rehearsal with lots of run-throughs of songs Tuesday, but environmentalists concerned about all the oil trains going to the Port of Albany, along with the possibility of more to come, say they’ll  be back later this month when the Legislature is in session.

As well as singing some protest songs, members of Environmental Advocates and People of Albany United for Safe Energy (PAUSE) donned hazmat suits as part of their plea for Gov. Andrew Cuomo to give close scrutiny to a proposal by Global Partners to build a plant at the Port of Albany that would possibly serve to heat and thin tar sands oil from Canada that might eventually be shipped to the city by train and then via barge down the Hudson.

Currently, the port is handling oil that is fracked in the Bakken Shale region of North Dakota. Environmentalists are upset over the potential dangers of the tankers of oil coming by train. Shipping tar sands oil would add ecological insult to injury they say, due to the higher potential greenhouse gas emissions of that relatively dirty fossil fuel.

“This is Governor Cuomo’s Keystone moment,” said Peter Iwanowicz, executive director of Environmental Advocates of New York, referring to the proposed Keystone pipeline that would run from Canada to the Gulf Coast.

Here is EA’s release and some video from our photographer Cindy Shultz, of the gathering:

Local residents and environmental leaders led a Capitol protest today calling on Governor Andrew Cuomo to reject the oil industry’s plans to turn New York State into a “virtual Keystone pipeline” for Canadian tar sands oil.

A letter to Governor Cuomo from national environmental figures Bill McKibben (350.org), Margie Alt (Environment America), Michael Brune (Sierra Club), and Larry Schweiger (National Wildlife Federation) was released noting the Cuomo Administration’s approval of any crude oil heating facility in New York State would have national and global environmental and public health implications. Such approval would also significantly increase the extraction and distribution of some of the world’s dirtiest and most dangerous crude. Protesters also dressed in hazardous waste material (hazmat) suits to draw attention to the oil industry’s idea of 21st century economic development: spill cleanup.

The letter can be found online.

Peter Iwanowicz, executive director of Environmental Advocates of New York said, “This is Governor Cuomo’s keystone moment. For two years under the state Department of Environmental Conservation’s (DEC) watch, the oil industry has laid the groundwork to turn New York into a primary route to market for some of the dirtiest and most dangerous oil on earth. Nationwide, eyes are watching the Governor, because of the destruction tar sands would have on our climate. We thank our national partners for impressing upon the Governor that New Yorkers need him to move beyond rhetoric and act to protect our environment and public health.”

Michael Brune, executive director of Sierra Club said, “With the numerous recent disasters involving shipping crude oil by rail, it’s obvious that rail is not the answer. And with pipeline tragedies like the ones on the Kalamazoo River and in Mayflower, AR it’s clear that pipelines aren’t the answer either. Ultimately, the only real way to protect public health and safety is to leave dirty fossil fuels in the ground and move as quickly as possible to clean energy like wind and solar.”

Sandy Steubing of People of Albany United for Safe Energy (PAUSE) said, “The public doesn’t care about regulatory jurisdictions. We do care that the transportation of volatile Bakken crude threatens our basic health and safety needs.”

Ned Sullivan, president of Scenic Hudson said, “Governor Andrew Cuomo has provided outstanding leadership in forging an economic development strategy for the Hudson Valley that builds on the strength of the river as the centerpiece of the regional economy. The Department of Environmental Conservation should follow the governor’s lead in safeguarding the natural and economic assets of the Hudson Valley by requiring a full and exhaustive review of the Global Companies’ proposed facilities in Albany and New Windsor with a special focus on the potentially devastating impacts of an accident or spill on the people, communities and natural treasures of the Valley.”

Kierán Suckling, executive director of the Center for Biological Diversity said, “Oil trains in New York have become virtual pipelines, with all the threats of actual pipelines, like Keystone XL. But in the case of oil trains it was pretty much anything goes until they started blowing up and killing people. Now, it’s time for government to act, and for human safety and the environment to come first, which is the way it should have been to start. “

Federal Regulation (U.S.), Local Regulation, Rail industry, Spill prevention and response

Council opposes crude by rail in Vancouver, WA – safety issues

Repost from The Oregonian
[Editor – Significant quote: “a majority of Vancouver City Council members recently announced they opposed the $110 million terminal, citing not its potential environmental impacts, but their concern that the project may endanger the city’s 165,000 residents.”  – RS]

Fiery oil train accidents heighten scrutiny of major Vancouver, WA rail terminal

By Rob Davis | April 11, 2014
 
Port of Vancouver oil terminal – 2.  The Port of Vancouver’s rail loop would be used to unload 360,000 barrels of oil daily from trains. (Courtesy of Port of Vancouver)

Building the largest oil-by-rail terminal in the Pacific Northwest was never going to escape controversy, not in a region with a robust environmental lobby.

But for a planned terminal in Vancouver, Wash., a series of fiery oil train explosions has expanded opposition and heightened scrutiny of a project promising to be a bellwether for a growing number of facilities in development along the West Coast.

Tesoro Corp., a major oil refiner, and Savage Cos., a supply chain logistics manager, are proposing to bring four loaded oil trains a day through the Columbia River Gorge into Vancouver, where crude would be loaded on barges bound for West Coast refineries. The terminal could process 131 million barrels of oil annually, seven times more than trains hauled through Washington last year.

Trains and trade are an indelible part of Vancouver’s identity. Roughly 75 trains move daily through the city, which traces its history to being a hub of the Pacific Northwest’s 19th century fur trade.

GS.00036566A_IT.OIL.TERMINAL-02.jpg.jpeg

But a majority of Vancouver City Council members recently announced they opposed the $110 million terminal, citing not its potential environmental impacts, but their concern that the project may endanger the city’s 165,000 residents.

“We’re pushing a margin of safety that we’re not ready to deal with,” Councilman Larry J. Smith, a retired Army infantryman, said at a recent meeting. “The accidents sort of prove that. We have a ways to go to prove that we’re safe and secure and taking care of our citizens.”

Oil trains today aren’t as safe as they could be. Most tank cars moving oil are outdated models. While the federal government is tightening safety standards, new rules aren’t expected before late 2014. Upgrading the country’s rail fleet could take as long as a decade.

Meanwhile, the characteristics of the North Dakota oil moving by rail remain poorly understood. Before oil trains exploded, crude wasn’t thought to be especially flammable. But samples show that oil moving through Vancouver into Oregon is saturated with more propane and other flammable gases than comparable types of crude.

Those uncertainties led the Port of Portland to reject crude-by-rail terminals until safety gaps are addressed. But in Vancouver, the port has pushed ahead, with top leaders saying they believe stronger safety standards will be place by the time the project – worth $45 million over 10 years in lease revenue to the port – finishes a state permitting process expected to take a year or longer.

The port had a warning that the project would be more controversial than it expected. The agency approved its lease with Tesoro-Savage less than three weeks after the first oil train accident, which killed 47 people in Quebec last July.

After that accident, port and company representatives said something similar couldn’t happen in Vancouver. The Quebec accident, they said, happened on a short-line railroad with different standards than the main-line track that the BNSF Railway Co. operates in Vancouver. That was reinforced when a second accident happened on a short-line operator’s track in Alabama in November.

Then came a third oil train explosion in December – on a main line BNSF operates in North Dakota.

North Dakota oil train derailmentA string of train accidents involving crude oil from North Dakota have created massive fireballs, including this one outside Casselton, N.D., in December 2013. Bruce Crummy/The Associated Press

Todd Coleman, the Port of Vancouver’s executive director, said his agency may have approached the project differently and gotten safety questions answered up front if it had known more accidents would follow. But Coleman said he is still confident that the project’s state permitting process will make it as safe as it can be.

In the meantime, Coleman has traveled to Washington, D.C., advocating for regulators, railroads and Tesoro-Savage to improve oil train safety.

The port recently commissioned a safety study that concluded the risks of an oil train derailment on its track are very low and recommended $500,000 in rail improvements the agency pledged to make. The study didn’t examine the chances of human-caused errors, the leading cause of rail accidents.

And the port has yet to approve a separate Tesoro-Savage safety plan, which Coleman said could “conceivably” allow the port to require tighter safeguards if federal regulations don’t catch up.

“It’s unfortunate incidents that have happened, absolutely,” Coleman said. “But it will make it safer in the future.”

That hasn’t assuaged fears among people Jack Burkman talks to. The three-term Vancouver city councilman and other elected officials say they’ve been barraged by questions from worried residents.

“I’m stopped everywhere in town by people I never would’ve expected to be concerned about this,” said Burkman, a retired engineer. “There’s too much lack of understanding. While the likelihood of an accident may be really, really low, the problems we’ve seen have been horrific. That’s what people are having a hard time wrapping their arms around.”

The project, which could employ 120, is clearly important to Tesoro. After City Council members announced last month that they would oppose the project, Tesoro executives immediately flew into town to meet with business leaders and the local newspaper to press their case.

Loading oil on barges in Vancouver would allow the company to move North Dakota crude to its California refineries for less than the full rail journey would cost. It could export Canadian crude or move U.S.-produced crude if the oil industry successfully lobbies to lift a ban on exporting domestic supplies.

A Wall Street analyst who follows Tesoro said the terminal faces a tougher permitting process amid rising opposition to crude-by-rail terminals.

“It’s a bit ahead of other projects and it’s a bit bigger, so it’s a bit more of an indicator relative to these smaller projects about whether they get approved,” said Allen Good, a Morningstar analyst. “If it does get stopped, it will give a lot of momentum to groups opposing other crude-by-rail facilities.”

One of the project’s most prominent opponents is Barry Cain, a developer working on a $1 billion waterfront redevelopment of a former Boise Cascade paper mill. He’s an unlikely opponent: A businessman who praises the domestic crude boom for helping the United States reduce its dependency on foreign oil.

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A rendering of the waterfront redevelopment project that developer Barry Cain is working on in Vancouver, Wash.Rob Davis/The Oregonian

Three oil trains a day already move past Cain’s development site, on the key BNSF line that connects to refineries in northern Washington. But the terminal would bring four more. Cain said he worries that fear about exploding oil trains will damage property values, make financing or insurance harder to find and dissuade potential development partners.

“We don’t want to lead any fight,” Cain said of his development partners. “We’re all businesspeople, we’re not the type who’d normally be opposed to this. It’s good to reduce our dependency on foreign oil. But this affects the project we’re working on.”

Ultimately, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee will have to approve or reject the project if it clears a quasi-judicial process being led by Washington’s Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council. Inslee has not taken any position on it.

Bakken Crude, Bridge safety, Discounted oil, Federal Regulation (U.S.), Lac-Mégantic, Oil prices, Public Safety, Rail accidents, Rail Safety, Rail tanker cars, Spill prevention and response

Crude trains: risky bridge conditions

Repost from The Sacramento Bee
[Editor: This is an excellent analysis of refinery benefits and risks, including commentary on the aging bridges used by oil tanker trains.  – RS]

Crude oil trains revive Philadelphia refineries but deliver new risks

By Curtis Tate
McClatchy Washington Bureau
Monday, Apr. 7, 2014

Chunks of concrete are falling off Philadelphia’s 25th Street Viaduct, which stretches for several city blocks in South Philadelphia. Two or three loaded crude oil trains pass over the 86-year-old structure every day, bound for Philadelphia Energy Solutions, a sprawling refinery complex that’s now the largest single consumer of Bakken crude oil from North Dakota.

PHILADELPHIA — Just a few years ago, the region’s refineries were on life support, hurt by high prices of oil imported from foreign countries. Now, they’re humming again with the daily deliveries of domestic crude in mile-long trains.

As one of the country’s largest destinations for crude oil from North Dakota’s Bakken region, Philadelphia illustrates both the benefits, and risks, of a massive volume of oil moving by rail.

“It’s a good marriage,” said Charles Drevna, president of the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers, an industry group. “Ultimately, it will be good for the consumer.”

Bakken_and_bridges_McClatchy2014-04-07_325But even as the oil and the trains that bring it may have saved refineries and jobs, they’re testing the limits of the city’s infrastructure and emergency response capabilities.

In January, seven loaded tank cars derailed on the 128-year-old Schuylkill Arsenal Railroad Bridge over the Schuylkill River. Though no crude was spilled, one car dangled precariously over the river and Interstate 76. Investigators blamed it on faulty track maintenance.

“We always hear that things will never happen,” testified former Rep. Curt Weldon, R-Pa., a former firefighter and mayor of nearby Marcus Hook, Pa., at a hearing last month, “but things always happen.”

The city grew up around its rail network, so the only way to the refineries for trains is through town. Some rumble over a steel viaduct through the campuses of Drexel University and the University of Pennsylvania. Others snake through a tunnel under the iconic Philadelphia Museum of Art and the steps made famous by Rocky Balboa.

One of the main routes to the sprawling refinery complex in South Philadelphia crosses a crumbling viaduct for several blocks through a residential neighborhood. Railroad officials say the 86-year-old viaduct is structurally sound, but residents are concerned about the chunks of concrete that regularly fall into the street.

“It may be perfectly safe, but the impression it gives just by looking at it is something else,” said Roy Blanchard, a longtime South Philadelphia resident knowledgeable about the railroads.

Robert Sullivan, a spokesman for CSX, which owns the structure and operates trains over it, said the viaduct was designed to accommodate heavy commodities, such as iron ore and coal, and the railroad is planning to improve it. It already has hired a contractor to begin removing loose sections of concrete.

While other major endpoints for oil trains, including Albany, N.Y., and towns in the San Francisco Bay Area and the Pacific Northwest, have attempted to slow or stop the shipments because of environmental and safety concerns, Philadelphia largely has welcomed the boom.

State and local officials hailed the opening in October of a rail yard that now unloads two 120-car trains carrying 80,000 barrels of oil every day to feed the largest refinery complex on the East Coast. A partnership between Sunoco and the Carlyle Group, a private equity firm, created Philadelphia Energy Solutions, which employs 1,000 workers.

Without Bakken oil to replace expensive imports, the refinery would have closed.

Republican Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett, flanked by Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter and Rep. Robert Brady, both Democrats, called the revived operation “a symbol of the connection that exists between Pennsylvania’s expanding energy industry and the potential we have to achieve energy independence in North America.”

But it’s also created new challenges for emergency response agencies.

A series of fiery derailments involving Bakken crude oil since last summer has raised questions about whether government and industry fully accounted for the risks before railroads began hauling it. The worst killed 47 people in Lac-Megantic, Quebec. Others in Alabama and North Dakota, while not fatal, drove home the need for new precautions.

“This crude is not the crude of old,” said Robert Full, chief deputy director of the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency.

Full was testifying before a state House of Representatives oversight hearing last month in nearby Eddystone, Pa., the site of a rail-to-barge facility set to open this month. It will unload two trainloads of crude oil a day by the end of the year.

Bob Andrews, a Texas entrepreneur and fire protection engineer, testified that Pennsylvania should consider developing a specific crude-by-rail response plan to protect communities and the investment they have in keeping the oil moving.

“The Philadelphia area is a good place to start,” he said.

Clifford Gilliam, a spokesman for the Philadelphia Fire Department, said the oil shipments don’t change emergency response procedures, but the department is preparing for the possibility of an event larger in size and scope than what it’s planned for in the past.

He said the department has a good working relationship with the railroads and refineries and “has the training and capability to handle hazmat incidents and, if warranted, join forces with other agencies.”

The rail operations, and risks, cross into Delaware and New Jersey. Norfolk Southern delivers a train every other day to a Sunoco terminal across the Delaware River in Westville, N.J., with plans to double the shipments later this year.

Getting the cars into the Westville facility requires repeat backup moves that block two four-lane highways on a track only feet from several homes.

The drawbridge the trains cross was completed in 1896. An $18.5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation helped pay for repairs to the aging span in 2011, before the oil trains began rolling across it.

At Eddystone, south of Philadelphia International Airport, workers are putting the finishing touches on new tracks that will transfer 160,000 barrels of oil daily from trains to barges by the end of the year. The companies involved in the operations say they’ve accounted for the risks.

CSX reached an agreement with the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency last month to give first responders access to the railroad’s shipment tracking system. Norfolk Southern, which plans to supply the Eddystone facility, intends to offer safety training.

Jack Galloway, president of Canopy Prospecting, one of the companies developing the Eddystone facility, assured lawmakers last month that it would be “top of the line,” equipped with containment units under the trains and floating barriers around the barges.

“We don’t think there’s any possibility of this oil getting away,” he said.

More Information

Bakken Crude, Crude Oil, Environmental Impacts, Federal Regulation (U.S.), Lac-Mégantic, Public Safety, Rail accidents, Rail routing, Rail Safety, Rail tanker cars, Spill prevention and response

Flawed tests play down crude oil’s explosiveness

Repost from The Toronto Globe and Mail

Flawed tests play down crude oil’s explosiveness

KIM MACKRAEL
OTTAWA — The Globe and Mail
Published Monday, Apr. 07 2014

Damaged rail containers and twisted wreckage can be seen on the main road through downtown Lac Mégantic, Quebec early July 7, 2013, a day after a train carrying crude oil tankers derailed and burst into flames. (Moe Doiron/The Globe and Mail)As Canada and the United States move to strengthen the rules for transporting crude oil by rail, there is mounting evidence that regulators are relying on tests that underestimate the risk of a fiery explosion like the one that destroyed Lac-Mégantic.

The current testing regime was not designed for unrefined crude and, as a result, can play down the dangers of shipping some light crude oils, according to industry and transportation experts. A United Nations panel on hazardous materials shared similar concerns last week when it announced that it would review international standards for shipping crude oil, including how crude is tested and classified, in response to a string of recent accidents in North America.

With the accuracy of the tests in question, there is suspicion that some shipments of Bakken crude may be more volatile than officials believed. It also raises the possibility that light crude oil drawn from other locations in North America is as potentially explosive as crude from the Bakken – but has not been receiving the same level of scrutiny.

The devastating fire in Lac-Mégantic, Que. last July, began when a train carrying Bakken crude jumped the tracks and exploded in the centre of the small town, killing 47 people. A Globe and Mail investigation showed that oil from the Bakken formation, which straddles North Dakota, Saskatchewan and Manitoba, is more volatile and prone to exploding than conventional forms of crude.

Crude oil with a high concentration of light ends – such as methane and propane – is “most at risk” of being mischaracterized in standard testing procedures, according to a recent report commissioned by Transport Canada. Those light ends are potentially dangerous because they can ignite and magnify the size of an explosion.

The inaccuracies underscore how little is known about the risks of shipping crude oil by rail, a practice that has increased dramatically during the past five years and now accounts for an estimated 230,000 barrels of oil a day in Canada. Oil is widely known to be flammable, but regulators did not believe until recently that it had the potential to explode and cause the kind of destruction it did in Lac-Mégantic.

Flash point and boiling point tests, which are required for crude shipments in Canada and the U.S., both have difficulty measuring samples that contain significant concentrations of light ends, according to the report to Transport Canada. Another common test, known as the Reid Vapour Pressure test, has also been criticized for use on crude oil because it can allow light ends to easily vapourize at the time samples are collected from highly volatile crude.

“When you try to apply [current tests] to samples that have light ends, they don’t work as well,” said Bob Falkiner, a director for the Canadian Crude Quality Technical Association who also works for Imperial Oil. “You get biased results reported from those test methods because of the lost light ends.”

A spokesperson for Transport Minister Lisa Raitt said the minister is aware of concerns about the crude-testing regime and Transport Canada is “looking at options” related to volatility tests. Speaking with The Globe after an event in Toronto last week, Ms. Raitt also welcomed the UN panel’s decision to study crude shipments and testing.

Producers in the Bakken are expected to stabilize crude oil before shipping it, in a process meant to remove many of the light ends from the rest of the product. Those light ends can be sold separately, but limited transportation infrastructure in the fast-growing Bakken area has led some producers to flare the products instead – which means they simply burn them on the spot. In some cases, flaring has become a “de facto stabilization process,” said Bill Lywood, founder and president of Crude Quality Inc.

However, several industry experts said there is a financial incentive for producers to leave some light ends in the crude – rather than burning them off or selling them separately – because they can increase the overall volume of the crude they are selling. At the same time, because of testing limitations, it can be difficult for producers, shippers and buyers to determine whether enough of the volatile light ends have been stripped away before crude oil is transported across the country.

In an effort to address the problem, some companies and industry experts are advocating the use of a newer vapour pressure test that uses a sealed, pressurized cylinder to prevent light ends from escaping when a sample is taken.