Category: Railroads

Declining output from shale-oil fields cut demand for key types of railroad cars, new data shows, the latest sign of the fallout from lower oil prices. Buyers ordered 4,470 new railway tank cars during the quarter ended March 31, down 6% from a year earlier and about 70% from the 14,964 tank cars ordered during the fourth quarter, according to the Railway Supply Institute, a Washington-based trade group. Tank car orders had surged along with output from shale-oil fields, whose crude oil drillers generally transport to refineries by rail. But with a global oil glut that has driven down oil prices by nearly 50% in the past year, output from North Dakota’s Bakken Shale field dropped in both January and February. And the U.S. Energy Department has predicted the Bakken field as well as Eagle Ford, a shale-oil field in South Texas, would report production decreases for April and […]

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Emergency Order Restricts Speed to 40 MPH Crude by Rail The DOT’s Federal Railroad Administration issued an emergency order on Friday that establishes a maximum speed of 40 miles an hour for certain trains going through high threat urban areas. Citing “gaps in the existing regulatory scheme”, the agency beefed up the 2014 voluntary agreement by making this speed limit a requirement for trains hauling crude oil and other flammable liquids. The emergency order defines affected trains as: 20 or more loaded tank cars in a continuous block or 35 loaded tank cars of class 3 flammable liquid AND at least one DOT-111 tank car loaded with class 3 flammable liquid The emergency order states that “Speed is a factor that may contribute to the severity of a derailment or the derailment itself. Speed can affect the probability of an accident. A lower speed may allow for a brake […]

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ENLARGE A BNSF Railway freight train loaded with crude oil derailed March 5 in a rural area near Galena, Ill. Several cars ruptured and the oil caught fire, generating large explosions. Photo: Telegraph Herald/Mike Burley/Associated Press U.S. regulators are urging railroads to change the way they deal with wheel defects, saying the problem may have caused a fiery oil-train derailment in Illinois last month. Despite multiple warning signs, a train carrying crude oil from North Dakota to Philadelphia continued to travel on a potentially faulty wheel, according to a preliminary federal investigation. Twenty-one cars of a BNSF Railway Co. oil train derailed near Galena, Ill., 160 miles west of Chicago. Several cars ruptured during the accident and the oil inside caught fire, generating large explosions. On Friday, the Federal Railroad Administration issued a safety advisory pointing to a broken wheel and telling railroads to act more aggressively to fix […]

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NTSB Calls for Stricter Rail Standards The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is urging tougher standards for oil tankers carrying Bakken crude. Related: Bakken Crude by Rail Under Attack In a 10 page letter to the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA), the NTSB outlined its findings from their study of recent train derailment accidents and concluded that the current fleet of DOT-111 tank cars rupture too quickly and result in spillage and ignition. The agency also found that performance of the industry’s enhanced CPC-1232 rail car is unsatisfactory. Controversy over the safety of moving crude by rail has skyrocketed as several high-profile accidents have recently made headlines. This combined with a sharp increase in crude by rail since the start of the oil boom has many concerned. Related: Crude by Rail Up 1700% “We can’t wait a decade for safer rail cars,” said NTSB Chairman Christopher A. […]

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ENLARGE Oil trains traverse Jersey City, N.J., where officials are concerned about the potential for a spill. Photo: Joe Jackson/The Wall Street Journal Imagine a mile-long train transporting crude oil derailing on an elevated track in Jersey City, N.J., across the street from senior citizen housing and 2 miles from the mouth of the Holland Tunnel to Manhattan. The oil ignites, creating an intense explosion and a 300-foot fireball. The blast kills 87 people right away, and sends 500 more to the hospital with serious injuries. More than a dozen buildings are destroyed. A plume of thick black smoke spreads north to New York’s Westchester County. This fictional—but, experts say, plausible—scenario was developed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency in one of the first efforts by the U.S. government to map out what an oil-train accident might look like in an urban area. Agency officials unveiled it as part […]

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Connor Lake/AP/The Star Tribune An oil train south of St. Paul, Minnesota, in July 2014. After almost two years of deliberation, Barack Obama’s administration is expected to enact regulations next month that will attempt to protect trackside communities from exploding oil trains . However, the new rule won’t take the one step that could decrease the risk almost immediately — requiring North Dakota oil producers to either reduce their product’s explosiveness or ship it in pressurized cars. Officials say they can’t take that step because nobody really knows how to reduce or properly measure the oil’s volatility. Roughly a dozen oil trains have exploded in the United States and Canada in the past 21 months, including one in Quebec that left 47 people dead. The U.S. Department of Transportation has repeatedly warned of the unusual volatility of North Dakota’s oil. But the draft of the new rule that was […]

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Federal regulators say industry not acting quick enough to ensure safety of rail cars carrying crude oil. Photo by Steven Frame/Shutterstock WASHINGTON, April 7 (UPI) — The National Transportation Safety Board called on the rail industry to act quickly to replace or retrofit cars designated to carry crude oil. The NTSB said it can’t "wait a decade" for safer rail cars while crude oil delivery by rail increases at an exponential rate. "That is why this issue is on our Most Wanted List of safety improvements," NTSB Chairman Christopher Hart said in a statement. "The industry needs to make this issue a priority and expedite the safety enhancements, otherwise, we continue to put our communities at risk." The increase in U.S. crude oil production is more than the existing network of pipelines can handle, leaving the energy industry to rely on rail as an alternate shipping method. Federal data […]

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Some oil companies have turned to trains to move crude to refineries. ENLARGE Photo: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg News The growth in oil-train shipments fueled by the U.S. energy boom has stalled in recent months, dampened by safety problems and low crude prices . The number of train cars carrying crude and other petroleum products peaked last fall, according to data from the Association of American Railroads, and began edging down. In March, oil-train traffic was down 7% on a year-over-year basis. Railroads have been a major beneficiary of the U.S. energy boom, as oil companies turned to trains to move crude to refineries from remote oil fields in North Dakota and other areas not served by pipelines. Rail shipments of oil have expanded from 20 million barrels in 2010 to just under 374 million barrels last year, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. About 1.38 million barrels a […]

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LONDON (Reuters) – More than 1 million barrels of crude oil move by train across the United States every day, according to data published for the first time by the government on Tuesday. The volume of crude shipped by rail has increased more than 50-fold in five years, from just 630,000 barrels in January 2010 to 33.7 million barrels in January 2015, the Energy Information Administration (EIA) revealed in its first monthly report on movements of oil by rail ( link.reuters.com/vyt44w ). Until now, information on oil shipments has been incomplete, partly confidential and scattered across a number of sources. The Association of American Railroads, individual railroad companies, and the federal government’s Surface Transportation Board, which regulates freight rates, have all published limited data on shipments. The EIA has now brought together the confidential data from the U.S. Surface Transportation Board and Canada’s National Energy Board as well as […]

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