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Collection: Northwest Coal & Oil Exports

Coal Goes Off the Rails

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It’s been a rough summer for coal trains.

There have already been at least 6 major headline-grabbing derailments, at least one of which was fatal. Then observers in the Columbia River Gorge snapped damning photos of coal trains passing through Columbia Hills State Park in Washington.

Here’s one:

(Photo credit: Columbia Riverkeeper)

That black cloud billowing above the train is almost certainly coal dust.* One would hope that photos like this should put to rest the coal industry’s nonsense that the shipments are clean. Clearly, there are direct and harmful impacts.

Many more photos are available on Columbia Riverkeeper’s Facebook page.

The coal dust was hardly the most egregious recent problem in the Northwest. That honor was taken on July 2 when a coal train derailed near the town of Mesa in eastern Washington; 31 overturned railcars spilled an estimated 6 million pounds of coal.

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Why US Coal Can’t Ship From Canada

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Sightline has an updated new a research memo, “Coal Exports From Canada” that documents the facts about Canada’s coal exporting capacity. The truth is that ports in British Columbia do not have sufficient capacity to handle the volumes of coal planned for Washington ports.

It’s not even close.

The state coal lobby continues to claim that US coal exports will simply shift to BC if Washington doesn’t build its own export facilities. But it’s simply not true.

The full details and analysis are here.

Why Seattle’s Freight Interests Should Worry About Coal Exports

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Coal train passing through downtown Seattle.

Compared to the noise about congestion from a basketball arena in Seattle’s SoDo district, there’s an eerie silence when it comes to congestion from coal trains there. Yet coal trains would almost certainly create traffic problems in SoDo and elsewhere, with potentially serious consequences for Seattle’s manufacturing and industrial businesses.

The proposed coal export terminal near Bellingham would add 16 loaded and empty coal trains per day, if operating at full capacity. That’s according to the project’s proponents, although my calculations, based on typical coal train volumes reported by the industry, suggest that it would be more like 19 trains per day.

Coal trains can easily be 8,000 feet long, which means that it takes more than 6 minutes to clear a street crossing when traveling at 15 mph, a pretty typical speed in an urban area. Then factor in 30 seconds of street closure time for warning signals to sound or crossing arms to stop traffic, plus 30 seconds to re-start traffic after the train has cleared the intersection. Add it all up and you get this: Bellingham’s new loaded coal trains would completely cut off street intersections by somewhere between 105 minutes and 125 minutes of every day.

That’s a problem for SoDo, which has four at-grade street crossings of the main rail line. Here’s a look at Seattle’s prime industrial land between SafeCo Field and Spokane Street:

Let’s examine those streets, going from north to south:

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Freight Rail and Property Values

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I recently came across a fascinating research paper by a PhD candidate in economics at the University of California, San Diego. Michael Futch analyzed residential property values near several freight rail corridors in Los Angeles that experienced substantial changes in rail traffic.

Here’s what he found:

…an increase in rail traffic by 10 million gross ton miles per mile (MGTM/mi) causes a 0.7 percentage point lower growth in home values within a 1/3 mile band around the tracks.

For the uninitiated “gross ton miles per mile” is a rail term used to measure freight rail density. It is defined as the movement of one ton of freight a distance of one mile, including the train weight of goods, cars and locomotives.

In “Examining the Spatial Distribution of Externalities: Freight Rail Traffic and Home Values in Los Angeles,” Futch uses repeat-sales data to track home values along three freight rail corridors near the Los Angeles seaport. Over the period of his study, two of the corridors saw big reductions in traffic volumes as planners redirected freight to the central line, called the Alameda Corridor.

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China Turns Away Coal Shipments

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If you follow coal exports, you’ll be fascinated by new developments in China: at least 30 vessels loaded with unsold coal are sitting off the coast. According to the energy industry journal Platts:

At least 30 Panamax or Capesize vessels are floating off China’s coast because traders who bought them have been unable to resell them to end-users, two industry sources said Tuesday at a conference in Indonesia…

“The situation is really very bad and is getting worse,” one industry source said.

A source from South Korea said he is surprised about the number of vessels that cannot discharge coal in various ports in China…
Chinese traders who bought and already paid for the coal from the international shippers and producers are now desperately trying to re-sell the cargoes to Chinese end-users or to other north Asian coal buyers…

The unclaimed coal perfectly illustrates the fickle nature of the global coal market. Prices and demand can fluctuate wildly, making coal export a risky business proposition for port communities.

Coal market volatility is exactly why the West Coast has such a terrible track record with coal export. Facilities in Portland in the 1980s and Los Angeles in the 1990s fell apart in spectacular fashion—stranding millions of dollars in capital and foreclosing better economic development opportunities—after supposedly reliable Asian coal demand dried up.

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Coal Exports and Carbon Consequences II

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There are at present six proposals to export coal from Northwest ports. If all of these proposals are built, and if all of them operate at full capacity, the Northwest would be shipping 145 million tons of coal per year.

When burned, that coal will produce roughly 262 million tons of carbon dioxide per year. It’s such a staggering figure, that it’s a little hard to grasp. So here’s some context:

US map with states highlighted

 

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Railroad Union Stretches Truth About Coal Dust

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In a recent advocacy piece, a spokesman for a prominent railroad union made the following rather astonishing claim:

Trains carrying coal have been traveling through Western Washington on their way to Canadian ports for decades, yet the Northwest Clean Air Agency and the Puget Sound Clean Air Agency have no record of coal dust complaints.

For decades, really? In the context it’s made—in support of plans to export huge volumes of coal—that’s a claim so deceptive it’s about an inch away from a lie.

The federal government closely tracks cross-border coal shipments of coal. Here’s what the past 15 years looks like:

 

The coal plans for the Cherry Point facility alone are so huge that they render the past decades of coal shipments virtually unidentifiable.

Now, strictly speaking, it is true that the trains have been carrying coal through western Washington to Canada. But until the last couple of years, the volumes have been positively tiny. When I say “tiny” I mean that for many years just a few dozen rail cars with coal passed that way, or maybe a single short coal train. Not more.

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Northwest Utility Rejects Kinder Morgan’s Coal Pollution

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Huge news yesterday: Portland General Electric slammed the door on Kinder Morgan’s scheme to build a giant coal export facility on the Columbia River.

The reason? Because PGE agrees with what Sightline has been arguing: coal terminals mean coal dust pollution. And coal dust pollution, Sightline has shown, jeopardizes local health, environment, and economies.

Kinder Morgan, in particular, should not be trusted with coal-handling. The company’s track record is one of pollution, law-breaking, and cover-ups.

So PGE deserves a standing ovation for thwarting Kinder Morgan’s plans to build a coal terminal on port land for which PGE holds a long-term lease. But PGE’s decision is probably less about environmental responsibility than about plain business sense. The utility operates a natural gas plant near the proposed coal site and company officials worry that coal dust would foul the generating equipment. And PGE is right to worry: as Sightline has documented extensively, Kinder Morgan’s coal operations are plagued by escaping coal dust.

If PGE is right that coal dust is too risky for power plants, what might it mean for our lungs? Or for Columbia River fish?

Remember, PGE knows coal. They’ve been handling and burning it for decades at the Boardman Coal Plant in eastern Oregon. They know first-hand how dirty and dangerous it is. Presumably, they know too that coal terminals make terrible neighbors.

Today, we can watch Kinder Morgan’s PR flaks scramble to spin the story, like so:

“The PGE leasehold is only one of those sites. … Nothing has changed. We don’t have a site identified, and we have not put forth a proposal,” Fore said.

Really, Kinder Morgan?

Then why do Kinder Morgan’s own publicity materials identify a specific site? And why do they include a photograph of it labeled “proposed terminal development”?

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Coal Dust in South Africa

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South Africa is a major coal exporter and home to the world’s largest coal export terminal, located at Richards Bay on the country’s east coast. It’s no secret that the coal terminal is a major source of local pollution. As one academic journal article characterizes the situation:

The coal operations, which include stockpiles, shunting, conveyor belts and shiploading, create dust which is a major problem in the harbour and surrounding areas as it tends to coat all exposed surfaces.

Not surprisingly, the study’s authors find that the coal dust harms the area’s mangrove trees and related ecosystems. They note:

Dust on the undersurface of leaves is not removed by wind, rain, or even physical washing. The undersurface of the leaves, as well as the rough surfaces of twigs, branches and trunk, tend to accumulate dust and appear black.

Coal dust contamination in the area is so widespread and well-known that even the Richards Bay Coal Terminal (RBCT) company acknowledges there’s a problem. In it’s 2006 Annual Report:

RBCT commissioned Annergan Environmental Research to conduct an environmental study on the impact of coal dust at the Zululand Yacht Club in the Richards Bay Small Craft Marina. Results indicated that RBCT was one of the contributing dust factors at the Yacht Club.

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