Category Archives: Rail Safety

Derailment, Rail Safety, Spill prevention and response

Cleanup after North Dakota explosion: 10,000 tons to landfill, no cost estimate

Repost from The Republic, Columbus, Indiana

North Dakota health official: Cleanup at oil train derailment site ‘all but complete’

By JAMES MacPHERSON  Associated Press
March 19, 2014 – 4:24 pm EDT

BISMARCK, North Dakota — Cleanup of an oil train derailment on the outskirts of a small southeastern North Dakota town “is all but complete,” a state health official said Wednesday.

“We’ve identified a couple of small spots that still smell of oil, but cleanup for the most part is done,” said Dave Glatt, chief of North Dakota Department of Health’s environmental health section.

The Dec. 30 collision occurred when a BNSF Railway train carrying soybeans derailed and caused another company train carrying crude oil to derail 1 mile west of Casselton. The wreck sparked massive explosions, towering fireballs and an ominous cloud that hung over the city of about 2,400 residents. No one was hurt, but about 1,400 people voluntarily evacuated.

The derailment highlighted worries about shipping crude by rail and led to a safety alert from the U.S. Department of Transportation warning about the potential high volatility of crude from the rich oil fields of western North Dakota and eastern Montana.

Federal investigators determined 400,000 gallons of oil was lost when the oil-carrying train derailed and caught fire.

Glatt, who spoke to The Associated Press by telephone from the crash site Wednesday, said about 10,000 tons of oil-tainted dirt and other material has been removed by contractors working for the railroad. The company, based on the inspection Wednesday, has permission to begin backfilling the site with new soil, he said.

PHOTO: FILE - In this Dec. 30, 2013, file photo, a fireball goes up at the site of an oil train derailment in Casselton, N.D. State Environmental Health Chief Dave Glatt says cleanup after the BNSF train derailed and caught fire in the small southeastern North Dakota town "is all but complete." Federal investigators determined that 400,000 gallons of oil was lost in the derailment. (AP Photo/Bruce Crummy, File)

FILE – In this Dec. 30, 2013, file photo, a fireball goes up at the site of an oil train derailment in Casselton, N.D.  State Environmental Health Chief Dave Glatt says cleanup after the BNSF train derailed and caught fire in the small southeastern North Dakota town “is all but complete.” Federal investigators determined that 400,000 gallons of oil was lost in the derailment. (AP Photo/Bruce Crummy, File)

“They are good to go,” said Glatt, adding that regulators had estimated the cleanup of the fouled soil would last at least through the first part of summer. “They wanted to backfill in with good soil before the spring rains come and turn the whole area into a quagmire.”

Glatt said the state requires the monitoring of water runoff from the site at least through spring. BNSF also will be required to monitor groundwater for at least two years, he said.

“We want to continue to monitor that site, as a precaution,” BNSF Railway spokeswoman Amy McBeth said. “We will continue to work with the state Department of Health, as we have from the beginning.”

Most of the fouled dirt was taken by truck to out-of-state landfills, McBeth said. The tangled and charred wreckage of 15 grain cars and 21 oil tank cars that had been strewn in the area also has been hauled away, she said.

McBeth said the railroad would not disclose the cost of the cleanup.

Casselton Mayor Ed McConnell said things were beginning to return to normal in the small town, about 30 miles west of Fargo.

“It’s better than it was,” he said of the wreck site. “But there still is a good healthy mistrust of that track.”

Oil Industry, Rail Safety, Rail tanker cars

Washington Senator Cantwell calls for elimination of DOT-111 tanker cars

Repost from Longview Daily News, Longview, WA

Sen. Cantwell presses oil executives to fast-track use of safer rail cars

March 8, 2014 By Erik Olson

U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., is demanding the oil industry eliminate older, unsafe tanker cars that are hauling crude oil through the Pacific Northwest, including those that pass oil through Cowlitz and Columbia counties.

At a Senate hearing Thursday on rail safety in Washington, D.C., Cantwell pressed industry executives on when they will pull cars known as “DOT 111” off the rails in favor of newer, sturdier models that are less likely to be punctured and spill.

The safety of oil trains has come under increasing scrutiny following the increase in drilling from the Bakken shale fields centered in North Dakota. Communities on rail lines have expressed concerns of a growing risk of fiery explosions if oil trains derail and detonate highly flammable Bakken sweet crude, and regulators have been slow to respond.

Critics warn about the possibility of disasters like last year’s crude oil train derailment in Lac-Megantic, Quebec, which caused an explosion that killed 47 people.

“We’ve gone from four years ago — having basically nothing on rail by crude — to now having something like 408,000 carloads of crude. Knowing when those cars are going to be off those rails — these cars that the National Transportation Safety Board has already said are unacceptable — this is a key issue for me and for my state,” Cantwell said in a written transcript.

Oil industry executives, who own most of the tanker cars, told Cantwell said they hope to phase out 60 percent of the older cars by 2015 but couldn’t say when they’d all be off the rails.

In the Pacific Northwest, most of those trains are headed to the BP oil refinery in Anacortes near the San Juan Islands and to a converted ethanol production facility at Port Westward owned by Boston-based Global Partners.

Some of those trains pass through Cowlitz County on the way to the refinery, and other oil trains pass through Rainier en route to the oil export terminal at Port Westward.

Rainier Mayor Jerry Cole said he supports Cantwell’s efforts but trusts Global to operate safely while creating jobs in the area. He said a Global official called him this week and said the company is moving the oil as safely as possible. About a dozen trains with about 100 cars each currently come through downtown Rainier per month, 22 fewer than Global is allowed by its permit.

“The safer rail cars, at the end of the day, are good for everyone along that line, from their end destination to the beginning,” Cole said.

The legality of some of those shipments remains under dispute. Oregon state regulators said this week that Global has violated its permits by moving 297 million gallons of oil to Port Westward between December 2012 and November 2013 when its permit allowed 50 million gallons. The company is disputing the claim.

Railroad officials note that they don’t own tanker cars — the oil companies do — but they are installing safety measures on unit trains and mainlines, such as better brakes and additional locomotives. They said they applauded Cantwell’s call for increased safety.

“If something is on our rails, and we’re carrying it, we’re going to do it in the safest ways possible,” Burlington Northern Santa Fe spokeswoman Courtney Wallace said.

Bakken Shale, Lac-Mégantic, Rail Safety, Rail tanker cars

Chem Engineers’ review of TSB analysis of crude oil samples from Lac-Mégantic

Repost from The Chemical Engineer… news and jobs from the chemical, biochemical and process engineering sectors

Oil in deadly train blast explosive as fuel

Canadian authorities test Lac Megantic oil

Richard Jansen  07/03/2014

Explosion

The oil was found to have a flash point similar to unleaded gasoline

THE oil shipment involved in last year’s deadly Lac Megantic disaster has characteristics closer to gasoline than normal crude, according to a report by Canadian authorities.

Almost 50 people were killed when a train carrying crude produced from the US’ Bakken shale play exploded into a fireball after derailing in the Canadian town of Lac Megantic. In the aftermath of the disaster questions were raised over how the oil reacted so violently, as the properties of regular crude should make it very unlikely to explode.

In its engineering report, the Transportation Safety Board (TSB) says that the level of hazard posed by the oil “was not accurately documented” when it had been shipped. Using samples taken from the handful of tankers that didn’t derail, the regulator found that the oil at Lac Megantic had an extremely low flash point – the temperature at which it will form a flammable mixture with air – “similar to that of unleaded gasoline.”

“The large quantities of spilled crude oil, the rapid rate of release, and the oil’s high volatility and low viscosity were likely the major contributors to the large post-derailment fireball and pool fire,” it concludes.

In the wake of Lac Megantic there have been several accidents involving oil being transported from North American shale plays. Late last year a 106-car train came off the rails near the town of Casselton in North Dakota, US, and exploded. Though none of the incidents since Lac Megantic have caused a fatality, transport regulators across the region have looked to improve their safety regulations, with the US Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration announcing plans to reinforce its testing standards for crude.

The accidents have brought fresh attention to the increasing amount of oil transported across North America by rail. As production from shale oil and oil sands continues to grow faster than the pipeline network, rail has become an increasingly important method of transportation.

According to a report by the Association of American Railroads (AAR) released last year, in 2008 just 9,500 carloads of crude oil travelled by rail. By 2012 this had grown to nearly 234,000 carloads, with “another big jump” expected for 2013.

Federal Regulation (U.S.), Rail Safety, Rail tanker cars

Unsafe rail cars remain in service, Senators angry

Repost from The Star Tribune, Minneapolis, MN

Slow pace of oil train fixes draws Senate ire

Article by: JIM SPENCER, Star Tribune
Updated: March 7, 2014

On Capitol Hill, senators were told that none of the thousands of inadequately protected rail cars has been removed from service.

OilTrainAn oil train headed for Minnesota rolled through Casselton, N.D., scene of an explosive rail accident in December. Photo: New York Times file.

WASHINGTON – Virtually all of the potentially unsafe rail cars carrying crude oil across the country remain in service, hauling highly flammable liquid, an official from the American Petroleum Institute (API) testified at a Senate hearing on rail safety Thursday.

API official Prentiss Searles told Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, D-N.D., that to his knowledge the oil and gas industry had retired none of the puncture-prone tankers from their fleets.

The issue arose after Searles testified that 40 percent of the rail cars now hauling crude have updated superstructures designed to keep them intact if they derail.

Heitkamp pressed Searles to clarify his point. The senator explained that crude oil shipments from her state’s Bakken formation are growing so fast that all the newer, safer tanker cars being produced are needed for increased capacity, not replacement.

The tanker fleet “has grown,” Heitkamp said to Searles. “You haven’t taken any [of the more vulnerable cars] off the rails.”

“Not to my knowledge,” Searles replied.

Those cars continue to carry crude oil despite a National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) determination that “multiple recent serious and fatal accidents reflect substantial shortcomings in tank car design that create an unacceptable public risk.”

There were 27,130 substandard cars carrying crude oil as of the third quarter of 2013, according to the Railway Supply Institute. Another 29,071 carried ethanol, which also is flammable.

Frustration with the speed at which safety reforms are being implemented dominated Thursday’s hearing, which came in the wake of fiery oil train derailments in North Dakota and Canada.

Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, a Democrat, pointed out to a panel of government regulators and private industry representatives that federal rules for safer tank cars have been 2½ years in the making with no resolution.

“We’re moving as fast as we can,” answered Cynthia Quarterman, head of the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration.

Her response and those of leaders of the Federal Railroad Administration and Federal Communications Commission, drew an exasperated rebuke from Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., who chaired the hearing.

“We need to get it right, but we need to get it done,” Blumenthal said.

The volume of crude oil moved by train from production points in the United States to refineries grew from about 9,500 carloads in 2008 to 400,000 carloads in 2013. Each tank car holds 25,000 to 30,000 gallons of crude oil.

Virtually all of that oil gets where it is going without incident. But in the very rare exceptions, consequences have been destructive and sometimes deadly. The danger raises the stakes for people living near rail lines in states like Minnesota, where eight oil trains pass on a daily basis, six through the Twin Cities.

The oil and gas industry, which owns or leases most of the rail cars used to ship crude oil, developed a set of voluntary standards for more puncture-proof and leakproof tanker cars. But the NTSB considers the new design inadequate, something the petroleum institute disputes.

“This is shaping up as a regulatory fight,” Heitkamp observed. “This is very problematic from a public ­perspective.”

Besides the structure of rail cars, lack of computerized control of trains — called positive train control — and the unique volatility of oil drawn from the Bakken Formation were sore points at the hearing.

Positive train control will require installation of roughly 22,000 antennae near tracks across the country. The Federal Communications Commission has delayed antenna  deployment while it checks to see if any of the sites violate environmental and historic preservation laws. Several senators blasted the FCC for bureaucratic foot-dragging.

The unique volatility of Bakken oil also remains in dispute. The oil and gas industry denies it, but the Department of Transportation has said the oil drawn from North Dakota “may be more flammable than traditional heavy crude oil.”

Quarterman of the Hazardous Materials Safety Administration said the government has moved from testing its flash point and boiling point to looking at its vapor pressure and sulfur and flammable gas content. Still, regulators and industry have not settled on a new testing or classification regimen.

“It’s a learning process,” Quarterman said