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North Dakota reviews oil-train safety

North Dakota Gov. Jack Dalrymple calls for tighter rules to ensure safe transport of crude oil from state’s Bakken shale reserve. Photo by Steven Frame/Shutterstock There’s no way to offer a single solution that would allay concerns about the safety of crude oil transit by rail, North Dakota Gov. Jack Dalrymple said. Dalrymple spoke with U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx to discuss efforts to improve the safe transport of crude oil by rail from the state. The Republican governor said he called on the secretary to adopt new standards for rail cars carrying crude oil as soon as possible . "Secretary Foxx and I agree that there is no single solution to improving the safety of rail transportation," Dalrymple said in a statement Wednesday. North Dakota crude oil production is more than existing pipeline capacity can handle, forcing many in the industry to use rail as an alternative transit […]

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Trains Slow U.S. Petroleum Shipments After Derailment

(Bloomberg) — Rail shipments of crude and refined products fell last week to the lowest level since October 2013 after a derailment shut a track in Illinois for four days. The U.S. transported 12,724 carloads of petroleum in the week of March 8-14, according to data released Wednesday by the Association of American Railroads. That’s down 10 percent from the previous week and the lowest level for March since 2012. Petroleum shipments by rail have fallen since last summer as plummeting crude prices have caused the biggest slowdown of oil drilling on record. BNSF Railway Co. shut its mainline near the town of Galena, Illinois, from March 5-9 after a derailment, causing delays and reroutings. “Commodity price pressure is slowing and will continue to slow the cadence of drilling activity, and that’s one of the drivers of crude by rail being lower,” Vincent Piazza, senior energy analyst at Bloomberg […]

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U.S., Canada under pressure on oil-train safety

Sign up for our daily Energy Newsletter Federal agencies slow to address safety standards for crude oil transport by rail, critics say. Photo courtesy Transportation Safety Board of Canada ONTARIO, Quebec, March 18 (UPI) — Federal regulators in North America are under pressure from industry bodies and environmental advocates worried about the safe transport of oil by rail. North American crude oil production has increased to the point that there’s not enough pipeline infrastructure to handle deliveries. That leaves energy companies to rely more on rail as an alternate transit method and, with that, comes more derailments involving trains carrying oil. Canadian officials are still responding to a March 7 derailment of a Canadian National Railway Co. train carrying crude oil through Ontario. Three of the 39 cars that derailed fell into an area river in a ball of flames . Canadian Transport Minister Lisa Raitt announced new regulations […]

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Canada Transport Watchdog Wants New Tank Cars In Service Earlier

OTTAWA, March 17 (Reuters) – Canada’s transportation watchdog said on Tuesday that recent fiery derailments of trains hauling crude oil mean a new generation of stronger tanker wagons should be introduced ahead of schedule. The Transportation Safety Board (TSB) is probing two accidents within the last month involving Canadian National Railway Co oil trains which came off the tracks and caught fire near the small northern Ontario town of Gogama. Both trains were hauling CPC-1232 crude tankers, meant to be safer than the older DOT-111 models that blew up in downtown Lac-Megantic, Quebec in 2013, killing 47 people. Canada last week unveiled tough standards for a new generation of tanker cars that would replace the CPC-1232s by 2025 at the latest. "While the proposed standards look promising, the TSB has concerns about the implementation timeline, given initial observations of the performance of CPC-1232 cars in recent derailments," the agency […]

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Refiners Sue BNSF Railway Over $1,000 Oil Tank Car Surcharges

(Bloomberg) — BNSF Railway Co. was sued by a trade group representing 400 U.S. refiners and petrochemical makers objecting to a $1,000 surcharge the nation’s biggest rail transporter of crude oil tacked onto older, unjacketed tank cars. Link to Company News:{BRK/A US <Equity> CN <GO>} To contact the reporter on this story: David E. Rovella in New York at [email protected] To contact the editor responsible for this story: David E. Rovella at [email protected]

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Speed Limits May Not Stop Fiery Oil Spills, U.S. Rail Chief Says

(Bloomberg) — Lower speed limits for railroads may be ineffective at keeping oil trains on the tracks and preventing massive fireballs, such as those triggered in a series of recent derailments, the chief U.S. railroad regulator said. “If you’re going to slow trains down, you’re going to have to slow them down to 12 miles an hour,” Sarah Feinberg, acting chief of the Federal Railroad Administration, told reporters in Washington Friday. “And then you would just have other dangers. People queuing up at grade crossings while train car after train car of volatile product goes by,” she said. “That’s not good either.” A surge in U.S. oil production has increased the amount of crude moved by rail 5,000 percent since 2009, much of it from North Dakota’s booming Bakken field. A corresponding jump in accidents, including a 2013 oil-train derailment and explosion that killed 47 people in Lac-Megantic, Quebec, […]

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Oil industry must join U.S. railroads to boost train safety: regulator

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Rail operators are going to great lengths to prevent oil train derailments but the energy sector must do more to prevent accidents from becoming fiery disasters, the leading U.S. rail regulator said on Friday. Oil train tankers have jumped the tracks in a string of mishaps in recent months that resulted in explosions and fires. Several of those shipments originated from North Dakota’s Bakken energy fields. Officials have warned that fuel from the region is particularly light and volatile. Sarah Feinberg, acting head of the Federal Railroad Administration, said the energy industry must do more to control the volatility of its cargo. "(We) are running out of things that we can put on the railroads to do," she said. "There have to be other industries that have skin in the game." A national safety plan for oil trains, due to be finalized in May, would require […]

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Trains Carrying Crude in Canada to Face Tougher Safety Standards

(Bloomberg) — Canada is strengthening proposed new safety standards for rail cars carrying crude oil, requiring thicker steel and other improvements after a 2013 derailment killed 47 people. The latest Transport Canada proposals, published online Wednesday, go beyond earlier announcements by requiring rail cars carrying crude to have thicker steel, full “head shields,” mandatory thermal “jacket” protection among other upgrades. Canada continues to work with the U.S. on rail standards, the document said, adding the U.S. will make its own decisions. In its online update, Transport Canada said the Transportation Safety Board had pushed for improvements from those initially published in January 2014. Transport Minister Lisa Raitt announced the new standards, which are still subject to federal cabinet approval, in parliament Wednesday. The standards create “a new class of tank car specifically designed to transport flammable liquids by rail,” said Zach Segal, a spokesman for Raitt. The updated proposals […]

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Fires out at Ontario oil-train derailment

Fires tied to derailment of train carrying crude oil through Ontario extinguished and traffic to resume through region. Photo: Daniel J. Graeber The last of the fires tied to the derailment of a train carrying crude oil through Ontario have been extinguished, local officials said. A train carrying crude oil on a line operated by Canadian National Railway Co. derailed during the weekend in Gogama, Ontario. CN said a nearby bridge was damaged in the derailment, and five of the cars crashed into an area river. Some of the fires tied to the crash were allowed to burn out on their own. The village of Gogama said in a late Monday update rail cars were pulled from the river and rail traffic was expected to resume by Tuesday afternoon. "CN crews and external specialist firefighters extinguished the last of the fires at the Gogama derailment site," the village said. […]

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Oil train fires reveal problematic safety culture: Kemp

LONDON (Reuters) – Two more serious derailments and fires involving trains carrying crude oil in the past week confirm there is a serious problem with the safety culture on North American railroads. The latest fiery derailments occurred in northern Illinois involving a train operated by BNSF and northern Ontario involving a train operated by Canadian National Railway. They come just weeks after serious oil train fires in West Virginia involving a train operated by CSX and another Canadian National derailment in northern Ontario. Fortunately, these derailments occurred in sparsely populated areas, but it is only a matter of time before a train derails in a densely populated urban center and risks a mass casualty incident. The U.S. Department of Transportation predicts more than 200 crude and ethanol carrying trains will derail over the next 20 years, including ten in urban areas. Based on plausible assumptions, at least one of […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple