On Feb. 18, 2015, crews at the West Virginia train oil-train derailment were continuing to monitor
the burning of the rail cars near Mount Carbon next to Kanawha River.
A week ago, a 109-railcar train carrying 3.1 million gallons of volatile crude oil from the Bakken Shale of North Dakota derailed in Powellton Hollow, West Virginia. Twenty-seven of the cars went off the rails near the Kanawha River and 19 caught fire, burning for days and forcing an evacuation of more than 100 people there and in nearby towns. Only a relatively small amount of oil spilled into the river, which is one of the most polluted in the nation. Just a few days before there was an oil-train derailment in Ontario.
In these two cases nobody died, but as we saw in the case of the Lac-Mégantic oil-train derailment in 2013, when 47 people were killed and more than 30 buildings destroyed by the explosion and fire that ensued, these wrecks can be lethal, and the damage expensive to clean up and repair.
According to an exclusive Associated Press article published this weekend, a U.S. Department of Transportation report last July predicts that over the next decade there will be an average of 10 derailments a year of trains hauling crude oil or ethanol. Damage from these over the next two decades could be as high as $4.5 billion. But if a derailment occurs in one of the densely populated cities through which these trains routinely travel, it could kill as many as 200 people and cause $6 billion in damages:
The volume of flammable liquids transported by rail has risen dramatically over the last decade, driven mostly by the oil shale boom in North Dakota and Montana. This year, rails are expected to move nearly 900,000 car loads of oil and ethanol in tankers. Each can hold 30,000 gallons of fuel.
Based on past accident trends, anticipated shipping volumes and known ethanol and crude rail routes, the analysis predicted about 15 derailments in 2015, declining to about five a year by 2034.
Growth in oil-by-rail transport has soared from the 9,500 railcar-loads moved in 2008 to 500,000 car-loads last year. About 10 percent of the oil moving through the United States is now carried by rail, mostly from operations in the Bakken Shale of North Dakota and Montana. Pipelines are far safer, but rail is more flexible and new spur lines and terminals quicker to make operational. The stunning growth in oil production due to fracking has been accompanied by a growing number of high-profile derailments.
There is more below the fold.
One source of the problem is that the majority of the oil is being moved in tens of thousands of DOT-111 tanker cars, called "soda cans" by critics because they are so easily punctured and crushed. Most of them can carry a bit more than 700 barrels of oil, about 30,000 gallons.
The Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration last summer issued its comprehensive rulemaking proposal to make it safer to carry oil (and other flammables) by rail. Included in the proposed rule are lowered urban speed limits, braking controls and testing of mined gases and liquids. The rule would also require, within two years, to phase out the use of or retrofit more than 100,000 DOT-111 tank cars for shipping a category of flammable liquids that includes most Bakken crude oil.
The rule is supposed to become final on May 12. It was originally supposed to be finalized in January but was delayed after industry objections.
Industry foes of the rule are still not happy. They say the phase-out is too rapid and too expensive. DOT estimates $6 billion. But the American Petroleum Institute, a trade lobby, says the change would cost consumers $45.2 billion.
Industry puppet John Thune of North Dakota, who since the Republican takeover of the Senate in January has been chairman of the Committee on Commerce, Science & Transportation—which oversees rail safety—also says the rule moves too fast:
“Without question, we must improve the safety of our nation’s rail system, but I am concerned about the unattainable deadlines the rule proposes,” Thune said. “The DOT issued this proposed rule without analyzing the potential tank car shop capacity needed to retrofit or replace over 100,000 DOT-111 tank cars.”
The industry says a 10-year deadline is needed for replacing the tank-car fleet. But that's not the view of at least one of the experts in the field, Greenbrier, one of the nation's largest makers of tank cars.
Gannett cites Greenbrier’s chief engineer, Gregory Saxton:
“We think this industry has an amazing capacity to build more cars,” Saxton said. “If the demand is there, we'll meet it.”
Justin Mikulka at DeSmogBlog notes that in another
interview, Saxton said:
“If you set a 10-year deadline, it will take 10 years. We think that it can be done faster. We don’t want to see more Lac-Megantics.”
It should be noted that officials
have known since a 1991 National Transportation Safety Board report that the DOT-111s have a "design flaw that almost guarantees the car will tear open in an accident, potentially spilling cargo that could catch fire, explode or contaminate the environment." But despite knowing the danger, new tank cars with thicker walls were not mandated.
Nearly a quarter-century later, industry is still quibbling over how quickly they can remedy the situation.
And it could very well win this fight. Forty-five years ago, Mikulka notes, DOT proposed positive train control, which monitors and controls train movement to avoid accidents. In 2008, after a train collision that killed 25 people, Congress mandated that PTC be implemented by the end of 2015.
Sen. Thune says the deadline for putting that half-century-old life-saving feature into place is, just like replacing tank cars, "unattainable." It's reminiscent of the fight over the Railroad Safety Appliance Act of 1893 requiring air brakes and automatic couplers to replace manual brakes and link-and-pin couplers on all railcars. Industry went along with passage after years of resistance but only because states were passing their own safety rules, many of which were incompatible with each other.
Then, as now, profits over all.