Category Archives: Oil trains

Bakken Crude, Climate Change, Coal, Crude By Rail, Fossil fuels, Oil refineries, Oil trains, Take Action

CLIMATE ACTION: Protesters Block Train Tracks to 2 Washington Refineries, 52 arrested

Repost from ABC News
[Editor:  This article reports no arrests.  A later report in the Washington Post: 52 climate activists arrested in Washington railroad protest.  – RS]

Protesters Block Train Tracks to 2 Washington Refineries

By Phuong Le, AP, SEATTLE — May 15, 2016, 12:13 AM ET
Anti-Oil Protests
Members of the Seattle Raging Grannies sit in their rocking chairs chained together on the Burlington-Northern Railroad tracks at Farm to Market Road in Skagit County on Friday evening, May 13, 2016, in Burlington, Wash. From left are Deejay Sherman Peterson, Anne Thureson, Shirley Morrison and Rosy Betz-Zall. Hundreds of people in kayaks and on foot are gathering at the site of two oil refineries in Washington state to call for action on climate change and a fair transition away from fossil fuels. (Scott Terrell/Skagit Valley Herald via AP)

Hundreds of climate activists on Saturday marched to the site of two refineries in northwest Washington state to call for a break from fossil fuels, while a smaller group continued to block railroad tracks leading to the facilities for a second day.

Protesters in kayaks, canoes, on bikes and on foot took part in a massive demonstration near Anacortes, about 70 miles north of Seattle, to demand action on climate and an equitable transition away from fossil fuels such as oil and coal.

A day before, about 150 activists had pitched tents and set up camp on nearby railroad tracks to block the flow of oil flowing to the nearby Shell and Tesoro oil refineries.

“We can’t wait anymore. We’ve got to do things now,” Clara Cleve, 76, of Edmonds, said Saturday. “Direct action is very effective. My grandchildren are not going to have a place to live unless we move quickly now.”

Cleve said she plans to spend another night in a tent on the tracks and is prepared to be arrested for trespassing if necessary.

The protests are part of a series of global actions calling on people to “break free” from dependence on fossil fuels. Similar demonstrations are taking place in Los Angeles and Albany, New York, on Saturday and in Washington, D.C., on Sunday.

In upstate New York, climate activists gathered at a crude-oil shipment hub on the Hudson River in an action targeting crude-by-rail trains and oil barges at the Port of Albany. A group of activists sat on tracks used by crude oil trains headed to the port. Police did not report any arrests as of midday Saturday. Albany is a key hub for crude-by-rail shipments from North Dakota’s Bakken Shale region.

In Washington state, organizers are targeting two refineries that are among the top sources of greenhouse gas emissions in the state. Tesoro has started shipping Bakken crude oil to its refinery, and Shell is proposing an expansion project that would similarly bring in Bakken crude oil by train.

Officials with both Shell and Tesoro said in earlier statements that they respect the right of people to demonstrate peacefully, and that safety is their highest priority. A Shell spokesman also noted that the company, which employs about 700 workers at the refinery, is proud to be a part of the community and the refinery is a vital part of the region’s energy infrastructure.

BNSF Railway spokesman Gus Melonas said no trains are scheduled through Saturday but he declined to say whether any are expected to run Sunday.

“We had anticipated this and therefore adjusted scheduling with customers,” Melonas said. “At this point, we’re allowing the protest on our property.”

There had been no word of any arrests during the day, Given Kutz, a spokesman for the Skagit County Emergency Coordination Center, said late Saturday night.

The tracks, which connect BNSF’s mainline to Anacortes, serve the two refineries, as well as other customers who ship animal feed, steel and lumber by rail, Melonas said.

Skagit County spokeswoman Bronlea Mishler said authorities are monitoring the situation. Crowd estimates of the march range from several hundred to about 1,000 people, she said.

Bud Ullman, 67, who lives on Guemes Island, participated in the march, which he described as good-spirited, peaceful.

“The scientists are right. We have to get away from our dependence on fossil fuels, and it has to be done in a way that takes into serious consideration the impact on workers, families and communities,” he said.

The three-day event ends Sunday and has included “kayaktivists” demonstrating on water, community workshops and an indigenous ceremony.

“I’m here because there’s nothing more important to me than protecting the Earth,” said Elizabeth Claydon, 24, who lives in Seattle. “This is an urgent matter, and traditional ways are not working.”

Many of the nearly 40 groups involved in organizing the event were also involved in large on-water kayak protests against Shell’s Arctic oil drilling rig when it parked last year at a Seattle port.

Benicia City Council, Blast zone, California Attorney General Kamala Harris, Crude By Rail, Derailment, Explosion, Oil trains, Phillips 66, Public permitting, Sacramento Area Council of Governments (SACOG), San Luis Obispo County, Santa Maria Refinery, Surface Transportation Board, Valero Benicia Refinery, Valero Crude By Rail

SIERRA CLUB: Community Urges Benicia City Council to Deny Valero’s Dangerous Oil Train Proposal

Repost from Sierra Club – The Planet

Community Urges Benicia City Council to Deny Valero’s Dangerous Oil Train Proposal

By Elly Benson, staff attorney with the Sierra Club’s Environmental Law Program, April 6, 2016
Opponents of Valero’s oil train proposal rallied in front of city hall before the Benicia City Council hearing.
Opponents of Valero’s oil train proposal rallied in front of city hall before the Benicia City Council hearing.

On April 4, scores of concerned Californians converged on Benicia City Hall to urge the city council to reject Valero’s plan to transport volatile crude to its Bay Area refinery in dangerous oil trains. In February, local planning commissioners unanimously rejected the proposal, which would send two 50-tanker oil trains through California communities each day. Valero appealed that decision to the city council. Given the intense public interest in the crude-by-rail project, the city council has scheduled four public hearing dates this month.

Before Monday’s city council hearing began, opponents of Valero’s dangerous plan held a rally in front of city hall. Rally speakers included Berkeley City Councilmember Jesse Arreguín and Andres Soto of Benicians for a Safe and Healthy Community, as well as a local business owner and a senior scientist from Communities for a Better Environment, an environmental justice organization. Benicia residents were joined by members of “up-rail” communities (including Sacramento and Davis) who would be endangered by the oil trains rolling through their cities and towns on the way to the Valero refinery. Oil train derailments and explosions have skyrocketed in recent years — including the July 2013 derailment in Lac-Megantic, Canada that killed 47 people and obliterated several city blocks.

Berkeley City Councilmember Jesse Arreguín addressed the crowd at the rally outside Benicia City Hall.
Berkeley City Councilmember Jesse Arreguín addressed the crowd at the rally outside Benicia City Hall.

Inside the city council chambers, public comment began with testimony by a series of elected officials and agency representatives concerned by the risks posed by Valero’s oil train project. Speaking on behalf of the Sacramento Area Council of Governments (which represents six counties and 22 cities), Yolo County Supervisor Don Saylor urged the Benicia City Council to consider impacts on up-rail communities, including the 260,000 people in the Sacramento region who live within a quarter-mile of the railroad tracks. A representative from the Sacramento City Unified School District noted that 17 schools in the district are within the “blast zone” that would be put at risk by explosive oil trains on the railroad tracks. Other speakers included Berkeley Vice-Mayor Linda Maio and representatives testifying on behalf of up-rail air quality management districts, the City of Davis, and State Senator Lois Wolk.

After the elected officials and agency representatives spoke, residents of Benicia and up-rail communities voiced their concerns about the severe public health and environmental risks posed by Valero’s proposal. Although a few people expressed support for the project, the majority opposed it. Benicians for a Safe and Healthy Community presented the city council with a petition — compiled along with the Sierra Club, Stand, CREDO, Center for Biological Diversity, and 350 Sacramento — with 4,081 signatures of people opposed to Valero’s oil train project.
Benicians for a Safe and Healthy Community presented the city council with a petition signed by over 4,000 people who are opposed to Valero’s oil train project.
Benicians for a Safe and Healthy Community presented the city council with a petition signed by over 4,000 people who are opposed to Valero’s oil train project.

In addition to urging the Benicia City Council to uphold the permit denial, many speakers urged the council to reject Valero’s request to delay the appeal process. At a city council meeting last month, Valero unexpectedly asked the council to put the appeal on hold while the company seeks a declaratory order from the federal Surface Transportation Board regarding the scope of the legal doctrine of preemption. Valero has insisted that federal regulation of railroads means that Benicia is prohibited from considering the project’s impacts on communities and sensitive environments along the rail line (including derailments, oil spills, and explosions).

At the Benicia Planning Commission hearings in February, attorneys from the Sierra Club, Natural Resources Defense Council, and the Stanford Law School clinic refuted this expansive interpretation of the preemption doctrine, and the commissioners ultimately rejected Valero’s interpretation as overly broad. Notably, the California Attorney General has previously weighed in on the shortcomings of the city’s environmental review, and specifically noted the failure to adequately analyze impacts to up-rail communities. Valero has not offered a compelling rationale for why the Attorney General would request that analysis if preemption renders those impacts irrelevant. The oil industry’s self-serving interpretation of preemption was also recently rejected by planning staff in San Luis Obispo County, who recommended denial of a similar oil train proposal at a Phillips 66 refinery due in large part to the environmental and health impacts along the rail line.

In a letter submitted to the Benicia City Council last week, the Sierra Club and our allies explained why federal law does not preempt Benicia from denying the permit for Valero’s project. The letter also reiterated that the project’s local impacts, especially increases in refinery pollution, require the city to deny the permit. For years, the Sierra Club and our partners have pushed back against Valero’s efforts to hide the true impacts of its oil train proposal — including submitting comments at each stage of the environmental review process. Our allies in these efforts include NRDC, Benicians for a Safe and Healthy Community, Stand (formerly ForestEthics), Communities for a Better Environment, Center for Biological Diversity, SF Baykeeper, and Sunflower Alliance, among others.

Additional city council hearings are scheduled for April 6, 18, and 19, as needed for public comment and council action.

Media: Valero crude oil gets another shot at NorCal railways (KCRA Sacramento, 4/5/16)

Rallying in front of Benicia City Hall.
Rallying in front of Benicia City Hall.

 

Elly Benson is a staff attorney with the Sierra Club’s Environmental Law Program

Benicia City Council, Benicia Planning Commission, Blast zone, Crude By Rail, Explosion, Oil trains, Public Health, Public Safety, Take Action, Valero Benicia Refinery, Valero Crude By Rail

SIERRA CLUB NATIONAL TAKE ACTION: Protect California’s communities from explosive Benicia oil trains

Repost from the Sierra Club
[Editor:  Take action on the Sierra Club page.  – RS]

Take action: Protect California’s communities from explosive oil trains

Aftermath of the tragic 2013 crude-by-rail explosion in Lac-Megantic, Quebec, which took 47 lives.

Last month, decision-makers voted unanimously to reject a proposed crude-by-rail project at the Valero oil refinery in Benicia because it “would be detrimental to the public health, safety, or welfare” of Benicians and communities along the oil train routes. It was the right decision — projects like these, which put more than five million Californians within the blast zones of explosive oil trains, are not worth the risk.

But the oil company behind this project is appealing this decision to the Benicia City Council — so we need to speak out to protect communities like Benicia, Truckee, Davis, and Sacramento, that would be put at risk if this project moves forward.

This is an all-hands-on-deck moment to stop this dangerous crude-by-rail project once and for all. Take a moment (click here) to urge the Benicia City Council to listen to the public and the city’s own Planning Commission and say NO to Big Oil!

(TIP: If you personalize your message to the City Council with why you care about this issue, your public comment will carry more weight.)

 

Civil penalties, Criminal negligence, Crude By Rail, Derailment, Explosion, Federal pre-emption, Federal Railroad Administration, Federal Regulation (U.S.), Local Regulation, Oil trains, Public permitting, Rail accidents, Rail infrastructure, Rail inspection, Rail routing, Rail Safety, Risk Assessment, U.S. Department of Transportation

Inspector General Cites Failure of Federal Railroad Administration on Oil Train Safety

Repost from The Root Word, ForestEthics Blog
[Editor:  See also the earlier Associated Press story: Railroad Regulators Fail to Pursue Criminal Prosecution of Hazardous Cargo Safety Violations.  – RS]

News Analysis: Inspector General Cites Failure of Federal Railroad Administration on Oil Train Safety

By Matt Krogh, March 2, 2016
2015 Paul K. Anderson

In a scathing critique, the US Department of Transportation Inspector General called out the Federal Railroad Administration (which is an agency within DOT) for failing to adequately evaluate or reduce the risks of a catastrophic oil train accident to the American public. The conclusion: The FRA is failing to provide adequate oversight and policing of oil trains, and FRA fails to enforce the rules or prosecute violators when they find dangerous violations.

Oil trains are too dangerous for the rails. The Inspector General makes this point in the first sentence of the review, citing the fatal Lac Megantic oil train disaster. But we’ve heard from far too many local, county, and state officials around the country who believe the federal government is overseeing oil trains and guaranteeing public safety. It’s true that century-old railroad law puts railroads under federal control. That makes sense because a continental railroad system would grind to a halt if it was regulated by thousands of different local and state government entities. But no one should let “pre-emption” or federal-control get in the way of local permitting decisions, especially when it comes to public safety. Especially when it comes to preventing a calamity that could reduce another town to ashes.

This Inspector General report makes it clear the FRA is failing the American people with a good cop/good cop approach when it comes to mile-long oil trains carrying millions of gallons of toxic, explosive crude through US cities and towns.

Here’s some key quotes from the DOT IG report, reviewed in an excellent article by AP reporter Joan Lowy:

the Agency has no overall, national understanding of the risk environment and cannot be sure that the regions consider all appropriate risk factors

This points to a key flaw in FRA oversight: they assume that region-based inspection systems are all that are needed, and fail to look nationally, comprehensively, at the risks of moving oil by train.

…do not take into account risk factors such as the condition of transportation infrastructure, the shippers’ compliance histories, or the proximity of transportation routes to population centers.

This begs the question, what does the FRA look at in risk assessment? Track conditions, how good the individual railroads are at safety, and how close people are living to oil train routes seem pretty important.

FRA issues few violations, pursues low civil penalties, and does not refer possibly criminal violations to the office of inspector general

The FRA turns a blind eye to criminal violations, settles for low fines, and fails to bring in the Office of Inspector General when criminal investigations are warranted. We need a bad cop, folks.

One inspector noted that the Office of Chief Counsel has effectively “numbed” a large portion of inspectors into not writing violations and stated that some inspectors have preconceived notions that violations will not get through the process.

It’s true that the FRA does have inspectors — but the FRA’s buddy culture with the railroads means that hard-working inspectors on the ground have lost faith in the agency’s willingness and ability to regulate railroads.

respondents just smile and cut the check

By respondents the Inspector General means railroads. They don’t argue with miniscule fines, but then why should they? They are happy to pay small fines as a normal operating expense, and get back to moving vast quantities of explosive, toxic crude oil through America’s population centers.

While the specific circumstances of all of these violations may not have warranted maximum penalties, FRA settled for 5.1 percent of the roughly $105.6 million dollars in penalties it could have levied…

No, seriously, the fines are miniscule. FRA is only issuing 5% of the fines they could levy under the law. Wouldn’t it be nice if the highway patrol took the same approach to speeding tickets? It would, but then, the Wild West of our highways would be littered with the smoking wreckage of souped-up Camaros.

By applying the same penalty to all violations of a regulation, FRA is distancing its enforcement actions from the context of the behaviors they are meant to rectify, thus weakening penalties’ deterrent effect. Furthermore, by bundling violations, FRA’s settlement process removes penalty enforcement from the context of each violation and low penalties diminish the potential deterrent effect of the penalties set in the guidelines and the regulatory maximums.

And there you have it: it doesn’t matter the scale or the number of fines you get, you can talk your way out of it in the settlement process.

The Inspector General audit of the Federal Railroad Administration found an agency that fails to understand and regulate the severe threat to 25 million Americans living in the blast zone. When it comes to oil trains the FRA seems to work for the railroad and oil industry, and not the American people. Local and state officials faced with permitting decisions need to recognize their responsibility to protect the public, just as the FRA now needs to do their job when it comes to deadly oil trains.