Category Archives: Rail Safety

Bakken Shale, CPC-1232 standard, Crude By Rail, Disclosure of tank car contents, DOT-111, Emergency Readiness & Response, Rail Safety, Rail tanker cars

Expert Presentations: Oil Spill Prevention & Response Forum, Vallejo, CA

Powerpoint Presentations from the Oil Spill Prevention & Response Forum, Vallejo 16May2014:

1. Ernie Sirotek – Petroleum Crude by Rail
2. Gordon Schremp – OSPR Meeting Vallejo – CEC Final 5-6-14 GDS
3. Neil Gambow – New Regulations for Tank Car Construction
4. Joy Lavin-Jones Regs PP
5. Ed Hughlett – Casualty Lessons Learned CMA 2014
6. Lexia Littlejohn – First 96 Hours.CMA Presentation.Littlejohn
7. M Thomas OSPR Regulatory Overview
8. Nicole Stewart Spill Prevention and Response Day – KM
9. Geoffrey Ashton – LNG in NA safe bunkering procedures

Bakken Crude, DOT-111, Federal Regulation (U.S.), Oil Industry, Rail industry, Rail Safety, Tank car design, Tank car retrofit

Bloomberg: Feds announce weak “emergency order”

Repost from Bloomberg Business Week

The Government Takes a Weak Stab at Making Oil Trains Safer

By Matthew Philips  |  May 08, 2014

On Wednesday, a week after a train loaded with crude oil from North Dakota exploded in downtown Lynchburg, Va., dumping 30,000 gallons of oil into the James River, the Department of Transportation announced two moves to try to keep this from happening so frequently. It’s doubtful that either will make much of a difference in preventing what’s become a major safety hazard in the U.S.

Under a new “emergency order,” the DOT said it’s now going to require any railroad that ships a large amount of crude to tell state emergency responders what it’s up to. That includes telling them how much crude it’s hauling and the exact route it intends to take. Railroads also now have to provide local emergency responders with contact information of at least one person who’s familiar with the load, in case, you know the local fire chief needs to find out what the heck’s inside that overturned tank car that just unleashed a 400-foot fireball.

This emergency order applies to any train carrying more than 1 million gallons of crude specifically from the Bakken region of North Dakota. That’s essentially all the trains hauling crude across the U.S. right now. Since there aren’t enough pipelines connecting the oil fields in North Dakota, most of the nearly 1 million barrels the state produces leaves every day by train. It takes about 35 tank cars to haul 1 million gallons. Most of these oil trains are 100 cars long and stretch over a mile.

The reason this applies only to Bakken crude is twofold. First, that’s most of what’s being hauled. Second, the oil coming out of the Bakken is unlike any other kind that’s out there. It’s light, sweet, and superflammable, with high levels of propane and methane. That makes it almost impossible for local first responders to put out the fires that erupt when these trains derail. Sometimes, their only recourse is to evacuate the area and watch the tank cars burn.

Knowing these trains are coming might help the local fire and police departments prepare, but unless these local emergency teams get better equipment to deal with these fires, it’s unclear how much good any advance notice will do. And considering how frequently these trains are crisscrossing the country, you can’t evacuate town every time an oil train rumbles through. Prior notification will, however, give a heads up to all the local officials, who have been largely clueless about all the oil that’s getting transported by rail through their cities and towns. Last week, Lynchburg’s city manager, Kimball Payne, admitted to the Wall Street Journal that he had no idea that CSX was moving oil through town.
The amount of oil moving by train each month has risen by nearly 400 percent since 2009Data: American Association of RailroadsThe amount of oil moving by train each month has risen by nearly 400 percent since 2009

On top of the emergency order, the DOT on Wednesday issued a “safety advisory,” in which it “strongly urg[ed]” the oil companies shipping Bakken crude on trains to use the best tank cars they can. This advisory came from the Federal Railroad Administration, a division of DOT. How that differs from the organization’s normal position on safety isn’t clear. But it seems not unlike the FAA, after a rash of plane crashes, “strongly urging” airlines to buy the safest kind of planes they can and stop using old, outclassed ones.

The old, outclassed ones in this case is the DOT-111 model of tank car that’s been involved in most of the crude train explosions, including the one last summer in Quebec that killed 47 people. Although it’s widely deemed unfit for transporting crude, the DOT-111 is used to move the vast majority of oil sent by train in the U.S. It’s also the same classification of tank car that’s used to haul agricultural commodities, such as corn or soybeans.

According to the investment bank Cowen Group, about 100,000 DOT-111 tank cars in the U.S. are used to haul flammables such as crude and ethanol. About three-quarters of them may require retrofitting or a gradual phaseout. While some energy companies, such as Tesoro, are already choosing to phase out DOT-111s in their North Dakota operations, most companies are sticking with them until they’re forced to change. A complicating factor is that it’s not even clear, given how volatile Bakken crude is, whether using safer, better-reinforced cars would even help keep a derailed train from exploding.

The DOT’s safety advisory urging the use of better tank cars is a weaker step than what Canadian regulators did two weeks ago, when they aggressively moved to phase out all DOT-111s from hauling crude within three years. In an e-mail, a DOT spokesperson wrote that the agency is moving as quickly as it can to update its tank car regulations and that the safety advisory is a step it can take immediately. Last week, DOT Secretary Anthony Foxx sent to the White House a list of options on how to make crude-by-rail safer.

The DOT is obviously getting pushback from energy companies, which would have to foot the bill for leasing more robust tank cars. It’s unclear how many of the energy companies will decide to switch because the federal government is strongly urging them to.
 
Philips is an associate editor for Bloomberg Businessweek in New York.
Bakken Crude, Derailment, Explosion, Oil Industry, Rail industry, Rail Safety

Bomb Trains: a whole new spin on the 1%

Repost from The Martinez Gazette

Martinez Environmental Group: The 1 percenters

May 8, 2014 | by GUY COOPER,  Special to the Gazette

This is not about income inequality. Doesn’t involve Warren Buffett or the Koch brothers (er, not directly anyway). This is about oil train safety.

Another crude oil train just derailed this past week, exploding cars dumped into the James River in Lynchburg, Virginia. Could have been much worse. A 100-car oil train right in town. Could have destroyed the town. But it was only going 24 miles per hour, was properly operated and apparently had no mechanical problems. It’s thought the ground along the riverbank gave way beneath the tracks. That’s comforting.

In the midst of this crude-by-rail (CBR) rush, the railroads repeatedly tout a 99 percent safety record. Really? What does that mean? Ninety-nine percent of what? How do you account for all of these accidents lately?

Amazing how fast this CBR infrastructure ramped up. An almost 50-fold increase in six years. I have no idea how something like that can be accomplished, but I do know they didn’t sweat all the small stuff like, oh, issues of life and death, health and safety.

U.S. rail is reported to have spilled more oil in 2013 than in the previous 37 years combined, 1.15 million gallons. That figure doesn’t even include Canadian spills like the 1.5 million gallons at Lac Megantic alone. The Association of American Railroads reported carrying about 434,000 carloads of crude last year, 12.5 billion gallons, so a few million gallons spilled here or there is just a drop in the bucket. The rail industry quotes a 99.998 percent safety record based on billion tons per mile successfully delivered to its destination. In other words, if one car of a 100-car train falls off the tracks, splits open and blows up, but the rest of the cargo survives unscathed, the safety rating of that train remains 99 percent.

I guess that’s a useful stat to entice oil producers, but it’s not what interests me. I want to know how often the trains run into trouble. A 2013 U.S. State Department assessment comparing pipeline to rail noted trains have an “increased likelihood of spills.” The more trains, the more likely an accident. From 2008 to 2013, the annual number of carloads of crude on the rails jumped from around 9,500 to over 400,000. The number of accidents likewise skyrocketed.

Perhaps a more useful way to look at things from our side of the tracks comes from a Tim Truscott Facebook page that maintains a running list of bomb train derailments in North America (https://www.facebook.com/notes/bomb-trains/2014-the-year-in-bomb- train-derailments/250370288468161). Found it via Roger Straw’s terrifically informative blog across the water, The Benicia Independent (benindy.wpengine.com).

Mr. Truscott states, “By ‘bomb train,’ I mean those trains hauling one or more cars of crude oil, fuel oil, ethanol, methanol, propane, butane, liquified natural gas (methane), vinyl chloride, ammonium nitrate or high-nitrogen fertilizer such as anhydrous ammonia, phosphoric acid or some other highly volatile or especially toxic or caustic cargo. I’m also counting derailments if the engine or engines derail and cause a diesel fuel spill. So far in North America in 2014, we have seen an average of one bomb train derailment every five days.”

He lists 23 incidents so far this year. I suppose that’s just 1 percent of something. I prefer to think of it as one per week.

So when I hear that whistle blow and I halt my walk to the waterfront as the next oil train passes, I’ll have to wonder. Is that this week’s one percenter coming down the line?

Bakken Crude, Derailment, Emergency Readiness & Response, Explosion, James River, Lynchburg Virginia, Public Safety, Rail Safety

Lynchburg cleanup, and quote by Contra Costa County Fire Marshal

Repost from The Huffington Post
[Editor: A detailed account of the difficulties in emergency response and cleanup.  Look for the quotes by Contra Costa County Fire Marshal Robert Marshall, indicating that they couldn’t adequately fight this kind of fire unless the oil company provide specialized equipment.  – RS]

After Lynchburg, Virginia Oil Train Crash, Fire Chiefs Fear Other Accidents

AP | by By ALAN SUDERMAN and LARRY O’DELL | 05/02/2014
Workers remove damaged tanker cars along the tracks where several CSX tanker cars carrying crude oil derailed and caught fire along the James River near downtown Lynchburg, Va., Thursday, May 1, 2014. Virginia state officials were still trying Thursday to determine the environmental impact of the train derailment. (AP Photo/Steve Helber)
Workers remove damaged tanker cars along the tracks where several CSX tanker cars carrying crude oil derailed and caught fire along the James River near downtown Lynchburg, Va., Thursday, May 1, 2014.  Virginia state officials were still trying Thursday to determine the environmental impact of the train derailment. (AP Photo/Steve Helber)

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Early reviews found no human error or mechanical failure that could have caused a fiery derailment of an oil train in downtown Lynchburg, Virginia, the National Transportation Safety Board said Friday.

Investigator Jim Southworth said a total of 17 train cars derailed Wednesday afternoon, with three tumbling into the James River. Southworth said one of those cars breached and caught on fire. The CSX train was carrying Bakken crude from North Dakota when it derailed.

CSX said in a statement Friday that all but two of the derailed cars have been position for removal from the site.

Southworth said at a news conference that investigators have interviewed the train’s conductor and engineer, and reviewed footage from a camera mounted on the front of the locomotive and the train’s data recorder that is similar to a black box found on airplanes.

“I don’t see anything in the way the crew handled the train that might contribute to this accident,” Southworth said. He said they would continue to try to find the cause.

He also said no defects have been found in the train cars or the track signals. Southworth said there’s still large amount of work to do to examine the rail itself due to the ongoing cleanup. Recovery efforts are moving slowly because of complexity involved in hauling a more than 200,000-pound tanker car out of the river by crane, he said.

State environmental officials on Thursday spotted oil sheens 12 miles downstream from the derailment site, said Department of Environmental Quality spokesman Bill Hayden. The state has estimated that about 20,000 to 25,000 gallons of oil escaped. Hayden said the department had not seen any oil around Richmond, which is downriver from Lynchburg and draws its drinking water from the James River.

The derailment was the latest in a string of oil-train wrecks, which has brought renewed demands that the Obama administration quickly tighten regulations governing the burgeoning practice of transporting highly combustible crude by rail. Some experts say stronger rules to head off a catastrophe are long overdue.

There have been eight other significant accidents in the U.S. and Canada in the past year involving trains hauling crude, and some of them caused considerable damage and deaths, according to the National Transportation Safety Board. Bakken crude ignites more easily than other types.

No one was hurt or killed when a train derailed in Lynchburg, but emergency officials say it underscores that many departments don’t have the resources to deal with such an accident along a busy route for hauling oil from the booming Bakken oil fields in the northern U.S. tier and Canada.

“It definitely raises concerns,” said Williamsburg Fire Chief William Dent. “We have some minimal resources here.”

The worst-case scenario for his department, Dent said, would be an oil-train derailment on a stretch of CSX track passing between the College of William & Mary and the popular Williamsburg historic area. Some buildings on both sides would have to be evacuated, and the department would have to call on neighboring localities for help responding to the disaster.

Lynchburg officials evacuated some buildings and let the fire burn out, but Richmond Fire Chief Robert Creecy said a more aggressive response would be required if an oil train plunged from the elevated CSX track dissecting Virginia’s capital. The track spans Interstate 95 and, like the stretch in Lynchburg, grazes the edge of James River.

Richard Edinger, assistant fire chief in the Richmond suburb of Chesterfield County, said no fire department except those at some refineries has sufficient equipment and materials to deal with exploding oil-filled tank cars.

Edinger, who also serves as vice chairman of the International Association of Fire Chiefs’ Hazardous Materials Committee, said emergency responders have long been aware of the threat posed by the transport of crude oil.

“What’s new to this picture is the scale, the amount of product coming through,” he said. “That’s the game changer.”

Fire chiefs said firefighters receive training on responding to oil tanker fires — Williamsburg just conducted an exercise based on a simulated derailment of Bakken crude March 27, Dent said — but it hasn’t received any special emphasis.

“These are low-frequency, high-consequence incidents,” Edinger said. “When looking at all you need to purchase and train on, this is one of them but it doesn’t always make the highest priority.”

Nearly all of the train’s cars in Lynchburg were carrying crude, and each had a capacity of 30,000 gallons, officials said.

Lynchburg city spokeswoman JoAnn Martin said there was no effect on the water supply for Lynchburg’s 77,000 residents because the city draws from the river only during droughts.

___

O’Dell reported from Richmond.  Associated Press Writer Joan Lowy in Washington contributed to this report.