Category Archives: Tar sands crude

Canadian regulation, Tailings ponds, Tar sands crude

Tar-sands Tailings Ponds: Alberta Regulations Falling Short

Repost from NRDC – Jennifer Skene’s Blog
[Editor:  Don’t miss the excellent video below.  Also of note… the video refers to a powerful report on tar-sands mining by Ted Genoways in the December 2014 issue of Outside Magazine, “The High Cost of Oil.”  – RS]

Alberta’s Greatly Anticipated Tar Sands Tailings Ponds Framework Falls Short

Jennifer SkeneBy Jennifer Skene, March 13, 2015

A new Tailings Management Framework released by the Government Alberta unfortunately enables industry to sidestep taking meaningful action on one of the most pressing environmental issues of tar sands development. For years, Alberta’s political leaders have promised to finally address the harmful legacy of the toxic tar sands tailings problem. But this latest framework is not likely to compel industry action to clean up the tailings in a meaningful way, especially given its lack of meaningful enforcement mechanisms. This, in fact, makes the new framework a step in the wrong direction since the previous regulation, Directive 074, had concrete means of enforcement. Furthermore, Alberta’s history of unfulfilled promises to protect Canadian citizens and wildlife from the devastating effects of tailings ponds casts doubt on the framework’s true efficacy. This framework, without evidence of successful, speedy reclamation efforts, should not serve as a shroud obscuring the Canadian government’s inaction on tar sands and tailings ponds. It is further demonstration to U.S. officials that Alberta isn’t ready for serious action. The failure of the Alberta government to finally release a comprehensive, framework that stops the growth of tailings adds to the urgency to calls for a halt to an expansion of the tar sands industry.

The Problem of Tailings Ponds

Tailings ponds are a blight upon Alberta’s landscape that endanger both wildlife and Canadians. These ponds, which consist of the bitumen, napthenic acids, heavy metals, and other toxic substances left over from tar sands mining, kill and deform wildlife and poison downstream communities. There are currently 976 billion liters of tailings in the mineable region in Alberta–the equivalent of 390,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools–and this number is steadily growing. The dangers of the tailings ponds have been well illustrated. In addition to the recent tailings pond spills in Alberta and British Columbia, there is significant evidence that the ponds are leaking into groundwater, which could be placing wildlife and communities at risk (see video below).

This new tailings framework released by the provincial government is the latest effort to address the unrelenting growth of these tailings ponds and to hold tar sands companies accountable for taking steps to reclaim tailings. However, Alberta’s history and the framework itself provide plenty of reason to doubt that it will be effective.

Alberta’s History of Unfulfilled Promises

Canadian leaders have been heralding the creation of an effective tailings policy for years, but tailings volumes continue to grow. While Alberta has touted its environmental leadership, it has largely failed to protect its environment and citizens from the effects of tar sands tailings ponds. In 2010 Premier Ed Stelmach called for the elimination of tailings ponds, stating that the province would have to “get more aggressive” with mining companies to ensure that they reclaimed their waste. In April 2013, even as Alberta was failing to enforce existing tailings laws, Premier Allison Redford promised, “tailings ponds [will] disappear from Alberta’s landscape in the very near future.” This new framework’s timeline would not eliminate tailings in the “very near future,” nor would it constitute “get[ting] more aggressive” with the tar sands industry. In fact, if anything, it is a capitulation to the industry after they failed to carry out their obligations under Directive 074.

tailings.JPG
Tailings emptying into a pond in Alberta Photo by Rocky Kistner, NRDC

The previous tailings framework, Directive 074, was a failure, largely because it was not enforced. Directive 074, passed in 2009 by Alberta’s now-defunct Energy Resources Conservation Board (ERCB), required tar sands companies to reclaim a certain amount of tailings every year, beginning in 2010. By July 2012, companies were obligated to reduce 50% of its tailings every year thereafter, and tailings ponds had to be ready for reclamation within five years of the mine’s closure. The tar sands companies universally failed to meet the Directive’s requirements, and in 2013 the executive manager of the ERCB declared that Directive 074 was “overly optimistic” and that the ERCB would not take any actions to enforce it.

What’s In the New Framework

The new tailings framework – generally weaker than the previous Directive 74 – should not be construed as a solution to address the growing problem of tailings nor its enormous legacy on the northern Alberta landscape. Under the new framework, the Tailings Management Framework for the Mineable Athabasca Oil Sands:

  1. Companies are still able to generate large volumes of toxic tailings over the lifetime of a mine.
  2. Companies are given a lengthy window of time while they ramp up mining operations before they are required to start limiting tailings production.
  3. Because the Government of Alberta has not clarified what is means to “clean up” tailings, there may be a loophole for companies to dump the legacy tailings into end pit lakes.
  4. Companies have a significant amount of time to fully clean up tailings even after a mine closes.
  5. There are no provisions in the framework for enforcement.

The framework sets up tailings reclamation as a trapezoid (see figure below). Tar sands companies will be allowed to accumulate tailings to the extent that they would be able to be within range of an “End of Mine Life Target.” This target will vary based on the project. Companies are given a discretionary 3-10-year period during which they can accumulate tailings. After that time, they will be expected to maintain a constant tailings volume until the end of the mine’s life. Within ten years after the mine’s closure, the company will have to reclaim the entirety of the tailings.

tailings framework graph.jpg

One of the most immediate issues with the new framework is the discretionary period companies are given to accumulate tailings prior to having to engage in any reclamation efforts. It is unclear why the companies are being provided with this window, which will only lead to further accumulation. Furthermore, while the framework would reduce the total quantity of tailings on the landscape, the company is allowed to keep its tailings volume constant until the end of the mine’s life. Many mines last up to 50 years, meaning that full reclamation efforts, other than maintenance of a set amount of tailings, may not even begin for several decades and may not be completed until years after the mine closes. If the company goes out of business in that time, there may be no recourse to clean up the remaining tailings. Reclamation would also be further delayed because the framework provides projects with a ten-year window following the end of the mine’s life until the entirety of the tailings needs to be reclaimed.

Additionally, the framework allows companies a certain percentage deviation from their fixed accumulated tailings volume, referred to as a “Profile Deviation Trigger,” but this number is not specified. It will be up to the Alberta Energy Regulator (AER) to decide upon this percentage, along with each project’s tailings limits and end of life mine targets. However, the AER’s decisionmaking process is unclear, and it is uncertain whether stakeholders would be allowed to voice their concerns before the AER, leaving the basis for these quantities unknown.

Perhaps most significantly, given Alberta’s history with Directive 074, there is little provision in the framework for enforcement. If tar sands companies fail to abide by these more relaxed regulations, it is uncertain how they would be held accountable. The framework states that there will be a “compliance levy” if they deviate from their maximum permitted tailings, but the exact penalty and how it would be carried out, and whether it would be high enough to incentivize reclamation, are uncertain. Additionally, there is no mention of penalties related to tailings pond leakages into groundwater, leaving this crucial issue unregulated.

The framework also leaves vague what constitutes reclamation, stating only that “the land must be reclaimed to a resilient and functional boreal forest ecosystem.” This means the public is not given any guarantee as to whether toxic tailings will ever be cleaned up. The more established definition of reclamation is that it means returning the land to the thriving, vegetated region it was prior to the mine’s construction. Alberta regulators, however, have recently approved the use of end pit lakes as a mechanism for “reclamation.” These end pit lakes store tailings waste at the bottom, which is then capped or covered by fresh water. End pit lakes are largely terra incognita or, rather, lacus incognita.Their safety and effectiveness are unproven; it is uncertain how long, if ever, it will take for the freshwater layer to be free of toxins, or whether the tailings will seep into the surrounding land and water. Thus, even if the framework were effective and enforced, it may still be possible for companies to avoid more proven methods of reclamation.

Implications for the Future of Tailings

While Alberta regulators could certainly point to how the current framework improves upon Directive 074 in that it regulates both past and future tailings, the larger issues identified above loom large. Alberta’s historic lack of enforcement and the ambiguities in the law will give the tar sands industry an easy means of sidestepping any meaningful action on this major issue in the foreseeable future, making it difficult to imagine any scenario in which this framework achieves any substantial regulation of tailings ponds.

Bakken Crude, Crude By Rail, Derailment, Explosion, Moratorium on oil trains, Oil industry lobby, Rail industry lobby, Rail routing, Tar sands crude

Crude oil trains are unsafe, period. Stopping them will protect our communities and climate

Repost from Oil Change International
[Editor:  An important article by Lorne Stockman, Research Director
at Oil Change International in Washington, D.C.  Quote: “For the sake of a mere 4% of total petroleum passing through the United States, we say stop the trains now, protect North America’s communities and build an energy system that protects the climate and our citizens from a reckless oil industry.”  – RS]

Crude oil trains are unsafe, period. Stopping them will protect our communities and climate

By Lorne Stockman, March 26, 2015

rail-blog-featured v1The five major oil train derailments and explosions that occurred less than a month apart in the U.S. and Canada recently has refocused attention on the reckless practice of moving millions of gallons of crude oil at a time on a train through the continent’s communities.

The only sensible and safe position on crude-by-rail is clear. We need an immediate moratorium on crude-by-rail shipments in North America. This needs to stop now.

Based on the recent developments and disasters, we now know that nothing short of a moratorium on moving crude by rail in North America is required, until the safety of our communities and climate can be fully guaranteed.

The evidence that the practice is unsafe is undeniable. It’s hard to imagine a more terrifying proposition than one of these trains derailing and exploding in your community.  It is not a disaster waiting to happen, it has already happened over and over again.  That the regulator has still not acted is inexcusable.

Before we go into the details of what it would take to make it safe and why that will not happen without essentially banning the practice, let’s quickly examine what is at stake in terms of U.S. crude oil supply. This is important because it seems that the main reason the Obama Administration has failed to act is because it somehow considers the supply of crude oil enabled by crude-by-rail to be too important to effectively regulate.

This is unacceptable in and of itself, but when you see what’s really at stake regarding our community safety and climate crisis, the assumption appears to be beyond comprehension.

According to our estimates based on Association of American Railroads (AAR) data, about 850,000 barrels per day (bpd) of U.S. crude oil was loaded onto trains in the last quarter of 2014.  In addition, the Canadian National Energy Board reported that around 175,000 bpd of Canadian crude oil was exported by rail to the U.S. in the same period. For simplicity’s sake let’s call it one million bpd.

Meanwhile, the petroleum products consumed in the U.S. in the last quarter of 2014 averaged just less than 19.5 million bpd.  But 24 million bpd passed through the system as the U.S. exported an average of around 4.5 million bpd, including both crude oil and refined products.

In fact, while some pretty wild claims have been made about the current oil boom leading to “energy independence”, the U.S. still imported over 9 million bpd of crude oil and products in the same period.

So given the enormous amount of total petroleum passing through the U.S. system, what would be the impact of banning crude-by-rail immediately until we can work out whether it’s worth risking another disaster? The answer is not very much.

Crude-by-rail accounts for 4.1% of the total petroleum moving through the system (consumption plus exports) or 5.1% of total U.S. petroleum consumption.

What about U.S. oil production? That stood at 9.1 million bpd in Q4-14. The 850,000 bpd that went by rail is just 9.3% of that.

So over 90% of U.S. production traveled by means other than rail and there is in fact spare pipeline capacity in North Dakota and elsewhere. (See here for North Dakota government list of pipelines, refineries and rail facilities)

CBR---Total-Petroleum-Q4-14-Chart
Source: Oil Change International, U.S. Energy Information Administration, Association of American Railroads, Canada National Energy Board. … NOTE: Difference between Production plus Imports vs. Consumption is Refinery Gains and Natural Gas Liquids entering the refinery system.

Any way you cut it, crude-by-rail carries a very small percentage of the oil in our country, yet continues to pose an outsized risk to communities around the country. The build out of terminal capacity suggests that the practice could grow especially if the U.S. crude oil export ban is lifted. This would trigger a rush to move crude to the east and west coasts for export, threatening the communities along the way with much more frequent crude train traffic.

OCI_Box-CrudeTrains-Unsafe
CLICK TO ENLARGE

Are we really unable to ensure public safety because we’re worried that we may impact the transportation of 9% of U.S. oil production or 5% of our oil consumption?  Is government’s role really to weigh the probability of a major death toll against a fraction of energy supply or is it to protect the public? Aren’t our communities and our climate worth more than 1/20th of U.S. oil consumption?

Without crude-by-rail, the industry will have to produce only slightly less than it currently does, which is much more than it produced only a few years ago.  Is that really worth bomb trains endangering 25 million American every year?

The current effort to make crude-by-rail safer through increased regulations is in fact sadly misguided and inadequate. That crude-by-rail is inherently unsafe is painfully obvious.

That it cannot be addressed through looking at any single variable, such as tank car standards or the volatility of a particular crude oil grade, was made clear by a Department of Energy report released earlier this week.

That report aimed to look at whether Bakken crude oil is more volatile than other crude oil. It concluded that there was insufficient information about the crude oil in the Bakken to assess that at this stage. But in the press release the DOE made an important statement regarding the focus on any one particular cause of the terrifying crude-by-rail explosions that have so far occurred.

“The report confirms that while crude composition matters, no single chemical or physical variable — be it flash point, boiling point, ignition temperature, vapor pressure or the circumstances of an accident — has been proven to act as the sole variable to define the probability or severity of a combustion event. All variables matter.”

This goes to the heart of why crude-by-rail cannot be made safe.

It’s not Bakken crude, it’s all crude oil. It’s not the vapor pressure or boiling point of the crude; it’s the incredible weight of a 120-car train carrying 3.5 million gallons of crude oil and the pressure that exerts on rails making derailments more likely. It is the enormous kinetic energy that such a train exerts on tank cars during a derailment. It is the speed the trains travel and the inability of any tank car, including the more robust designs proposed in the draft rulemaking, to withstand the impact of a unit train full of oil derailing at anything near the slowest speeds that would maintain a viable rail freight system. (The tank car design proposed in the draft PHMSA rule has been shown to puncture at speeds of between 12 and 18 mph, while speed limits for crude oil trains are currently set at 40 mph. See pages 119-120 here.)

So there is a combination of things that could be done to prevent derailments and/or the occurrence of explosions and fire in a derailment; e.g. stronger tank cars, shorter trains, slower speeds, less gaseous crude among other things. But the rail and oil industries are fighting the tightest standards for any of these variables and so far it seems the Administration has not shown itself capable of fighting back.

Nearly two years has passed since 47 people were killed in Lac-Mégantic, Quebec by a crude oil train carrying Bakken oil. Since then at least ten fiery derailments have occurred among countless other less dramatic spills and incidents. The regulator has so far failed to propose an adequate suite of measures that would fully protect the public.

That the rail and oil industries are fighting any requirements that will increase their costs is standard practice; it will cost them money and the sociopathic nature of corporate behavior puts profits before the interests of society. But while the oil industry opposes stabilizing gassy crude oil, stronger tank cars and fast phase-outs for the existing stock of dangerous cars, the rail industry opposes better braking systems and stricter speed limits.

Together they make a strong team of opposition to the range of safety measures that might be effective. A safety regulator under fire from the combined power of two of the most notorious and well-resourced lobby machines in the history of the United States is unlikely to come up with a solution that prioritizes the public’s interest.

Beyond the urgent issue of the safety of hundreds of North American communities that live within a mile of the train tracks, some 25 million people in the U.S. alone, we urgently need to transition to a clean energy economy as fast as possible. The All of the Above energy policy that has brought us reckless crude-by-rail has been focused on pulling oil out of the ground as quickly as possible no matter the consequences, rather than transitioning us away from oil. That needs to change beginning with ending this dangerous practice.

For the sake of a mere 4% of total petroleum passing through the United States, we say stop the trains now, protect North America’s communities and build an energy system that protects the climate and our citizens from a reckless oil industry.

Go here for more on crude-by-rail

 

Bakken Crude, CPC-1232, Crude By Rail, Derailment, DOT-111, Explosion, Federal Regulation (U.S.), Massive increase in crude-by-rail, Tank car design, Tank car retirement, Tar sands crude

Federal Railroad Administrator on newer tank car: “It’s a Pinto with a better bumper instead of just a Pinto”

Repost from PRI’s Living On Earth, Environmental News Magazine
[Editor:  An important interview.  See full transcript below and good links below the transcript.  Click here for audio.  – RS]

Oil Train Safety Off Track

Steve Curwood, Air Date: Week of March 20, 2015
Five oil train derailments in five weeks–some with dangerous fiery consequences. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

In the past five weeks, there have been 5 oil train derailments resulting in large fireballs, and more oil was spilled in 2014 than in the last 38 years combined. Steve Kretzmann, Director and Founder of Oil Change International, and Sarah Feinberg, Acting Administrator of the Federal Railroad Administration, discuss rail safety with host Steve Curwood and offer different solutions to this multifaceted problem.

Transcript

CURWOOD: From the Jennifer and Ted Stanley Studios in Boston and PRI, this is Living on Earth. I’m Steve Curwood. At 12 million barrels a day, the US is the world’s leading oil producer, with much of the boost due to fracking technology. With pipelines at capacity the boom has led a 4,000 percent increase in the volume of crude oil that travels by rail, and that brought more accidents and more oil spills in 2014 than over the previous 38 years. Just these past five weeks brought five more derailments, with huge fires and polluted waterways, and some critics say new rail safety rules on the drawing boards won’t go far enough to protect the public or the environment. Steve Kretzmann is Executive Director and Founder of Oil Change International. Welcome to Living on Earth, Steve.

KRETZMANN: Thanks so much for having me here, Steve. It’s great to be back.

CURWOOD: Now, what we are seeing is a lot of crashes and explosions. What’s happening?

KRETZMANN: So we’re seeing, unfortunately, a very visible result of the ‘all of above’ energy policy, playing out with great risks to our communities around North America on a whole. The Bakken oil is very light oil, and it’s very explosive, it turns out, and people have known this, but it hasn’t really stopped them from shipping it via rail. And it’s also worth noting that because that oil is light oil, that’s mixed in with tar sands to form diluted bitumen, which is usually the way tar sands get to market, we’re also seeing tar sands trains now explode, and so they’re just trying to get as much out as fast as they can and maximize their profit. And as we know, the oil market is flooded with crude now and effectively we’re subsidizing that with our safety in our communities and our lives.

CURWOOD: Now, in Texas where there’s a fair amount of fracking for oil, there are machines that remove the most volatile portion, the most explosive part of fracked oil before it is shipped, but in North Dakota it is not. Why this discrepancy? Why don’t they make this safety precaution in North Dakota?

KRETZMANN: Well, it’s about profit, it’s about investment and infrastructure by the industry, so the production in Texas is very close to markets and so when they invest in the infrastructure to remove the lighter petroleum product – natural gas among other things – they can then sell that oil because they can put in the pipelines. On the other hand, North Dakota does not have those gas pipelines and the infrastructure is not there to capture it and so their options are burn it or try to force it into the tank car, which is what they’re doing. There are new regulations that are supposed to take effect from North Dakota that will reduce the amount that they can squeeze in there on a regular basis, but it’s not clear that the regulation is in line with what will actually create a safe car. It’s just slightly less than they’ve been able to get away with.

Older DOT 111 cars usually do not fair well in crashes, even at low speeds. (Photo: Robert Taylor; Flickr Wikimedia Commons CC BY 2.0)

CURWOOD: Talk to me about the new tanker safety rules and how effective they might be in preventing the kind of explosions we’ve seen on oil train derailments.

KRETZMANN: So it’s not clear what the new rules are going to be. There are the North Dakota rules which are a slight reduction in vapor pressure, and then there are the federal rules, which are under consideration by the Obama administration, and we’re going to see another draft of those supposedly within the next month. But there are very different options that they can take. They could build thicker-walled oiled trains, they could require that, but the oil industry doesn’t like that because it costs them more money. They could install electronically controlled pneumatic brakes on the railcars, but the rail industry doesn’t like that because it costs them too much money. One of the most effective things they could do is introduce a very serious speed limit. The DOT 111s, the old cars, still make up the majority of the crude by rail fleet; they’ve been shown to explode at seven miles an hour. The 1232s, which are the newer supposedly safer cars, but are the ones that have been involved in each one of these accidents recently, have been shown to explode at 15 miles an hour. So, we say you should put in serious restrictions here: all new cars, speed limits at 15 or below, particularly in populated areas. You know the industry gets very upset about that and says, “oh my God, that would mean we would have to stop production”. And you know, the point is “yes”, maybe actually reducing some production in the name of public safety is worth it here.

Steve Kretzmann is the Founder and Executive Director of Oil Change International. (Photo: courtesy of Mr. Kretzmann)

CURWOOD: So you mentioned that communities are at risk from these crude oil trains. What ones come to mind for you?

KRETZMANN: So when you look at the map of where crude oil trains are going around the United States, it’s very clear you start looking at the routes: Minneapolis, Chicago, St. Louis, New York, Philadelphia, Cleveland, Detroit. All these cities have crude by rail trains, these bomb trains running right through them. 25 million Americans live within the blast zone here and it’s sadly not a question of if but when one of these explosions is going to result in a tremendous tragedy. We have the opportunity to slow this down and put a moratorium in place before this happens and we should take it.

CURWOOD: That was Steve Kretzmann of Oil Change International. Well, a moratorium on oil transport by rail is unlikely, and the Obama Administration has yet to issue new rules, even after two years of work. So in the face of the recent accidents it’s issued some emergency rules and here to explain is Sarah Feinberg the Acting Administrator for the Federal Railroad Administration. Welcome to the program.

FEINBERG: Thank you for having me.

CURWOOD: So what do you have in place now in terms of emergency regulations then, emergency rules?

FEINBERG: Well, we have a lot. We have a requirement of railroads to share information about the product that’s being transported with emergency responders in each state. We have an emergency order that’s in place regarding testing and making sure that the right tank car and right packaging is being used for each product. Over the course of a year and a half that I’ve worked on this issue, we were enforcing against violations for not testing the product properly, not packing it in the right container, not handling it the right way, not sharing information about it. I’m not saying things are in a good place now, they certainly aren’t. We’ve got a long way to go, but when I think back to where we were a year and a half ago, it’s amazing to me we’re actually having a conversation about testing then.

A DOT-111 tank car with an insulating jacket and external heating coils can hold 20,000 gallons of crude. (Photo: National Transportation Safety Board; Wikimedia Commons)

CURWOOD: Now, not long ago there was a dramatic explosive derailment in West Virginia that involved the new kinds of cars, the supposedly safer cars, and some folks are saying that apparently having those cars aren’t safe enough. What you say?

FEINBERG: Well, it’s really important to understand the different kinds of cars that are out there. The one we hear about a lot is the DOT 111. That is the older tank car; I think everyone agrees across the board that tank car is certainly outdated. It’s not safe enough to hold this product or others. Industry on its own a few years ago came up with their own version of a tank car that’s called the 1232. While it is a better tank car, and it’s a newer version of a tank car, one person on my team once referred to the 1232 as the .111 with a five-mile per hour bumper on it. So it’s a Pinto with a better bumper instead of just a Pinto. The other most important thing to think about is that all 1232s are not the same. They didn’t have all the safety components that they could have had. They didn’t have a jacket; they didn’t have a thermal shield. These are important components to keep a tank car from basically experiencing the thermal events that create fireballs.

CURWOOD: No matter what kind of car it is, they’re going off the rails. Some folks say that the trains are just simply traveling too fast.

FEINBERG: Look, I mean speed should be a factor, but the reality of is that in all of these derailments, they’ve been very low speed. In fact, the agreements that we have in place with the railroads limit speed at 40 miles an hour. We’re now in a position where we’ve got railroads functioning below the maximum speed and we are still running into problems. There is not a tank car at this moment or even the new version of the tank car we’ve proposed that will survive a derailment above, say, 16 or 18 miles an hour. So that’s one of the reasons why this issue is so complicated. There is literally not a silver bullet. It’s not speed, it’s not a particular tank car, its not the way the train is operated. It’s all of the above and it needs to include, frankly, the product itself that’s being placed in the transport, the product that’s leaving the Bakken and heading to the refinery.

CURWOOD: How safe is it to allow such volatile fuel to be transported on rails?

Sarah Feinberg is the Acting Administrator of the Federal Railroad Administration. (Photo: FRA)

FEINBERG: I mean, if I have to be honest, I would prefer that none of this stuff be traveling by rail. I worry a lot about not just the folks who are working on the train and the passengers on the Amtrak that the train is going by, but I worry a lot about the people living in the towns and working in the towns that these trains are going through. Now, we have some routing protocols in place. There is a whole software system that the railroads use when they are trying to determine the right route for a substance like this, so it looks at things like city size, it looks at possible defects on rail, it looks at weather, it looks at speed, it looks at traffic, it looks at all of those factors and it basically spits out the best route for you to take.

CURWOOD: Industry a few days ago went over to the Office of Management and Budget, the folks who review the rule-making there inside of the OMB, and made a lot of complaints about the proposal to have this updated form of braking, they say it won’t have more significant safety benefits, it won’t have much in the way of business benefits and be extremely costly. Sounds like industry is pushing back against getting this stuff under control. Your take?

FEINBERG: Yeah, sure. And I expect that. Look, OMB meets with industry, yet the FRA is required to meet with all interested parties as well. So, as many meetings as I did with industry, I think we all did with the environmental community, small-town mayors, governors and interested members of Congress. So there are a whole lot of folks with a dog in this fight and they all want to talk to the regulator and they all want to talk to the Office of Management and Budget to affect the outcome of the rule. I think at the end of the day it’s OMB’s job and it’s FRA’s job to come up with the best possible rule that we can that will actually address the challenge. To be clear, that’s not an easy thing to do right now. It’s a bit amazing at this point you can take a common sense safety measure and watch the amount of time that it can actually take to turn into a regulation, but you know that’s my frustration, that’s our problem and our issue to deal with, and the main thing is we should just be keeping people safe.

CURWOOD: Sarah Feinberg is the Acting Administrator for the Federal Railroad Administration. Thanks so much for taking the time today.

FEINBERG: Thanks for having me.

CURWOOD: We asked the Association of American Railroads for comment on the proposed new regulations.

Spokesman Ed Greenberg’s reply is posted in full at our website, LOE.org.

It reads, in part: “America’s rail industry believes final regulations on new tank car standards by the federal government would provide certainty for the freight rail industry and shippers and chart a new course in the safe movement of crude oil by rail.”

Coming up…the power of labor allied with environmental activists. Stay tuned to Living on Earth.

The Association of American Railroads comment:

“The safety of the nation’s 140,000-mile system is a priority of every railroad that moves the country’s economy and the freight rail industry shares the public’s concern over recent high-profile incidents involving crude oil. This is a complex issue and a shared responsibility with freight railroads and oil shippers, which are responsible for properly classifying tank car contents, working together at further advancing the safe movement of this product.

The fact is, safety is built into every aspect of the freight rail industry, it is embedded through-out train operations and a 24/7 focus for thousands of men & women railroaders. Billions of private dollars are spent on maintaining and modernizing the freight rail system in this country. Since 1980, $575 billion has been spent on safety enhancing rail infrastructure and equipment with another $29 billion, or $80 million a day, planned for 2015.

Railroads have done top-to-bottom operational reviews and voluntarily took a number of steps to further improve the safety of moving crude oil by rail. Actions have included implementing lower speeds, increasing track inspections and track-side safety technology, as well as stepping up outreach and training for first responders in communities along America’s rail network.

Federal statistics show rail safety has dramatically improved over the last several decades with 2014 being the safest year in the history of the rail industry. More than 2 million trains move across our country every year hauling everything Americans want in their personal and business lives with 99.995 percent of cars containing crude oil arriving safely. That said, the freight rail industry recognizes more has to be done to make rail transportation even safer.

Freight railroads do not own or manufacture the tank cars carrying crude oil. Still, the freight rail system has long advocated for tougher federal tank car rules and believe that every tank car moving crude oil today should be phased out or built to a higher standard. We support an aggressive tank car retrofit or replacement program.

America’s rail industry believes final regulations on new tank car standards by the federal government would provide certainty for the freight rail industry and shippers and chart a new course in the safe movement of crude oil by rail.”

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