Tougher rules on shipping crude by rail mean oil producers in North Dakota’s Bakken region could soon face the unwelcome choice of spending more to ship by truck or cutting back on production altogether. That’s the takeaway from a Wall Street Journal report that says that the Railway Supply Institute is warning that tens of thousands of rail cars will be sidelined because they no longer meet code in the wake of new safety regulations on shipping crude oil by train. The U.S. Department of Transportation has mandated that rail cars carrying flammable liquids meet higher safety standards. North Dakota regulators also toughened its own rules on shipping , saying that volatile gases had to be removed from crude oil before shipping. There’s a potential upside for any business not involved in oil: Farmers, manufacturers and utilities have complained for the past year that oil […]