That horrific disaster ushered in a new era of fear about crude oil-by-rail shipments.
Two weeks earlier Sightline had published the first regional inventory anywhere of oil-by-rail projects. We pointed out that Oregon and Washington are home to nearly a dozen active or proposed oil train depots that in aggregate would move about as much crude as the Keystone XL Pipeline—and far more than the region’s oil refining capacity. We released the report widely, and the response we got back sounded a lot like crickets chirping.
But after the explosion in Quebec, our phones started ringing off the hook.
As a result of growing interest in the subject, we devoted ourselves to researching and explaining the issue. Here are some of the most important things we’ve learned about oil-by-rail since Lac-Mégantic:
It was still the ninth inning when fans began filtering out of the stadium. The Seattle Mariner’s were wrapping up a 3-2 win over Detroit on a warm, spring Saturday night. It was a perfect day at the ballpark.
Yet there was chance—unlikely but entirely possible—that it could have been a an epic disaster. With perhaps 40,000 people heading out into the city, this train came barreling past within just a few yards of Safeco Field.
In case you’re wondering, that is almost certainly a loaded oil train. It’s a hundred or so tank cars each carrying roughly 30,000 gallons of a notoriously explosive type of shale oil. It’s exactly the same kind of train—loaded up exactly the same kind of fuel—that resulted in a deadly disaster in a small town in Quebec.
After a string of high profile derailments and explosions, communities across North America are rightly concerned about the risks of an oil train explosion. Railroad workers generally do an excellent job of moving cargo through cities without incident. Yet accidents do occasionally happen; and in an era when a derailment might lead to a deadly explosion in an urban area, it’s worth understanding the risks more thoroughly.
So to get a better sense of the threat to local areas in the Northwest, we investigated accidents reports submitted to the US Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) to map every derailment in the Northwest from June 2011 (when regulators began requiring railroads to report the exact location of mishaps) through December 2013. Here they are:
[sightline-embed]
Our map shows 81 derailments in the first half of 2011 (yellow); 95 in 2012 (orange); and 100 in 2013 (red). You can zoom in, scan, and click on the markers to find some basic information about each of the derailments.
Media accounts of the Lynchburg oil train fire are routinely misreporting that the tank cars belong to the CSX railroad. In fact, CSX does not own the tank cars. As we pointed out in our train spotting piece, their true ownership is revealed by the markings on their sides, CBTX or CTCX, that are clearly … Read more
Update 5/19/2014: USDOT Secretary Anthony Foxx has now confirmed that the tank car that exploded and leaked oil into the James River was built to the newer CPC-1232 standard. But he didn’t say exactly how the tank car was breached, or if damage to the CPC-1232’s bottom outlet valve contributed to the fire. We expect to see this information when the NTSB comes out with their preliminary report in a few weeks.
Update 5/9/14: Preliminary reporting and statements by the NTSB confirm our findings here. At least 14 of the 17 derailed cars appear to be the newer CPC-1232 model; the other three have not yet been determined. (This article at Reuters says 10 of 13 were the newer model.)
In the wake of several high-profile oil train explosions, the industry has tried to assuage public fears by pointing out that it is building newer, and allegedly safer, models to haul crude oil. But yesterday, the alarming derailment and inferno in Lynchburg, Virginia clearly involved the newer-standard tank cars.
Take a close look at this footage from a drone posted by East Coast Drone:
Or take a look at the AP photo posted by Think Progress of the derailment. (Or glance at the dozens of high-quality images of the train derailment on the AP website.) Many of the tank cars, including at least one in the river, have a half-height head shield, which indicates that these were built to the standard, known as CPC-1232, adopted by the industry for tank cars ordered after October 2011.
Here are some of the questions we will be following as the investigation progresses:
** Was this unit train made up solely of the newer CPC-1232 tank cars? Tesoro and a few other oil-by-rail operators have said they can make oil-by-rail safe by requiring tank cars serving their facility to be newer-model.
** Were legacy tank cars mixed in with CPC-1232 tank cars, and did the older tank cars explode? In the drone video starting at 1:21 it looks like a number of the tank cars may not have the half height head shield, which would suggest they are the older legacy version, but it is difficult to tell from the video angle and resolution. (Notably, the industry has essentially told the federal government that it does not intend to phase out any of the older and notoriously unsafe models in the next few years.)
It remains to be seen whether the fire resulted from the newer cars, the older ones (if there were any), or from a combination of them. Either way, it’s a serious problem. If the train was composed solely of new-model tank cars, the Lynchburg accident may be evidence that crude oil trains are inherently unsafe regardless of the tank car models in use.
Word is that a crude oil-bearing train derailed in downtown Lynchburg, Virginia and caught fire. Photos and preliminary coverage here. Additional coverage here. There’s particularly good coverage on Huffington Post, here, and at the Roanoke Times, here: A CSX train carrying crude oil derailed Wednesday afternoon by the James River in downtown Lynchburg, sparking a massive … Read more
[prettyquote]“Look for the UTLX logo on tank cars when you watch trains roll by. As a Berkshire shareholder, you own the cars with that insignia. When you spot a UTLX car, puff out your chest a bit…” – Berkshire Hathaway’s 2012 Annual Report[/prettyquote]
In our previous installment, we explored how unsafe DOT-111s, the Ford Pinto of rail cars, make up the vast majority of oil-filled tank cars now riding the rails in North America. With DOT-111s, there is no margin for error. A serious derailment will almost always lead to oil spills or explosions. But if they are so clearly dangerous, why are these tank cars still on the rails?
The reason, in short, is because the railroad and rail car industries have opposed new safety regulations. (The oil and ethanol industries have abetted their cause.) Citing supposedly onerous costs for retrofitting unsafe tank cars, as well as the related infrastructure to load and unload the products they carry, these companies have successfully argued against rules that would require them to make the upgrades that could prevent the explosions.
Behind many of the industry groups opposing hauling Bakken crude in only safe tank cars is a single figure: Warren Buffett.
In early January, a federal agency alert made clear what many already knew: that crude oil from the Bakken formation is more prone to explosion than other types of crude oil. The warning came after tank cars carrying Bakken oil exploded in three separate railroad accidents in Alabama, North Dakota, and Quebec. It’s a worrisome finding for the hundreds of communities that host loaded oil trains every week.
Let’s take a closer look at some particular issues with Bakken oil.
What’s different about Bakken oil?
Bakken oil is a type of “light sweet crude,” a relatively high quality oil that is easier to refine into commercial products, but also easier to ignite. A few decades ago, light-sweet crude was the dominant oil type in the US. Light oil is by no means new to the industry, but the recent boom in oil extraction in the Bakken and similar deposits elsewhere does represent a new and unexpected development for the industry.
This one in New Brunswick: A Canadian National Railway Co. (CNR) train carrying crude oil and propane derailed in the eastern province of New Brunswick and sparked a blaze that was still burning more than 12 hours after the accident. A helicopter is being brought in today to pinpoint what is ablaze in the wreckage … Read more
With the recent blow-up in North Dakota, it seems everyone is (finally) paying attention to the risks of oil train explosions. I’m planning more analysis of the issue later, but for now here’s a roundup of some of the better pieces to read on the subject.
Hands down, the best reporting on the risk of oil-by-rail is coming from Canada’s flagship newspaper, the Globe and Mail. Grant Robertson’s first-hand investigation into the Bakken oil industry is particularly noteworthy. Among the damning findings:
A four-month investigation by the Globe and Mail found the oil being shipped from the Bakken region—which straddles North Dakota, and parts of Manitoba and Saskatchewan—is far more volatile than regulators and railways believed. The Globe found evidence that companies often don’t test their oil shipments for explosiveness before sending the trains, since crude oil, though flammable, hasn’t historically been considered extremely combustible.
The investigation also found that as more oil moved by rail in the past few years, no additional safety regulations were put in place by regulators to govern this growing method of shipping crude.
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