Bomb Train Primer. Strong Communities Work

Transcription

1 Bomb Train Primer 2015 Strong Communities Work New York was built on sweat, hard work and determination. That spirit lives on today. Many of us believe that to construct the kind of lives we want for ourselves, our families and our neighbors we have to work together. The values and vision we share as a community are important to each of us and gather us around action.

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3 The Bomb Train The Problem: The good news - Albany, because of its geographic location, with rail lines converging from all four directions and its access to the Hudson River, has become a major oil shipping hub. The bad news - the crude oil that is being shipped to the Port of Albany comes from the Bakken fields of North Dakota and has been determined by federal regulators to be more likely to catch fire than regular crude. In just the last two years the Port of Albany went from receiving no or very few shipments of oil by rail to now hosting millions of gallons of crude oil on hundreds of rail cars each day. Bakken crude oil underlies much of North Dakota and adjacent U.S. states and Canadian provinces; this crude oil has been accessed because of hydraulic fracturing ( fracking ) has made it economical. The Bakken shale formation is now a major U.S. oil field producing millions of gallons of crude oil per day. The Bakken crude oil is light and highly volatile. When spilled it poses an immediate risk of fire and explosion, as well as significant risks of air pollution. The Bakken crude is shipped predominately by rail. More oil was spilled in North America by rail car last year (1.15 million gallons) than in the previous 40 years combined, in 137 separate accidents. Part of the problem is the tanker cars used to transport the crude. The use of DOT-111 cars has increased dramatically over the past three years from 10,000 to more than 300,000. The DOT-111 cars or bomb trains as rail engineers call them, are prone to derailment and structural failure. Safety officials have warned for more than two decades that these cars were unsuited to carry flammable cargo; their shell can puncture and tears up too easily in a crash. These rail cars have no head shields which would help prevent puncturing from collisions with adjacent cars. They also lack pressure relief devices to prevent boiling liquid expanding vapor explosions. The fear of explosion and fire is real. On July 5, 2013, five locomotives were pulling 72 tanker cars of oil, each containing 30,000 gallons of volatile Bakken crude oil from North Dakota. A train parked on the main line for the night in Nantes, Quebec caught fire. The engine was cut which led to a loss of pressure in the air brakes. The hand brakes failed and the train began to

4 run away. By the time it reached Lac-Megantic early the next morning, the unattended cars were traveling at 65 mph. When the train reached the center of town, 63 tank cars derailed and many of those exploded tragically killing 47 people in a blaze that took over two days to extinguish. On December 30, 2013, a derailment happened on a BNSF line near Casselton, North Dakota. The train was then struck by a train on an adjacent track, igniting another huge fireball, although this one was luckily just outside of town. On April 30, 2014, a CSX train derailed in Lynchburg, Virginia setting the James River on fire, narrowly avoiding the downtown area of the city of 75,000 people. These are just a few examples of the dangers that this situation presents. The blast zone around the Albany trains is extensive. It potentially could cover an area as wide as the Empire State Plaza to 4 th Street in Rensselaer. Desmogblog.com has posted an interactive map that allows information seekers to submit their address to learn if they are in the blast zone.

5 The Solutions: The growth of fracked oil from the Bakken oil fields has been sudden and the industry has been unprepared for the consequences of transportation options. Communities have also been surprised by the quick growth and accompanying threat. Few knew in Albany that such a radical expansion of rail traffic would happen or that the contents could be so deadly. Neither the plan nor consequences were discussed with the impacted public. The use of rail for transporting the volatile Bakken crude without significant upgrade to tankers and the rail system is an unacceptable solution. Most of the black tank cars being used are not up to any standard to provide safe transport of crude oil and especially Bakken crude oil. Retrofitting the rail cars or replacing them with cars with adequate safety features should be an immediate demand. A second option is the use of overland trucking which would require significant infrastructure development. The drop in fuel prices will make this option more attractive to shippers, though it is certainly more damaging to the environment, and as potentially dangerous as any other method of transporting crude oil. The third option in consideration and under serious debate is the development of pipeline transport. The Keystone XL Pipeline project is the most visible of those being proposed and has become a battle ground between parties and activists. The Keystone pipeline would be 1,179 miles in length and 36 inches in diameter transporting crude oil from Alberta, Canada s oil sands region to the U.S. Gulf Coast. Oil extraction from the tar sands is controversial because it requires vast amounts of energy and water and releases 14 to 20 percent more greenhouse gases than conventional drilling. Because the route crosses international borders, TransCanada needs a presidential permit from the U.S. State Department to construct the pipeline. There is also a proposed 1,100-mile-long pipeline that would carry oil through the Midwest as soon as the end of The Bakken Pipeline would run from North Dakota to Patoka, Illinois, passing through Iowa carrying 320,000 barrels of crude oil per day. Recently, that capacity has been increased, but Iowa citizens have been actively engaged in stopping the crossing of their state. What comes next? The diving prices on fuel will have an impact on the issue of transporting oil. Despite a drop of more than 50% in the price of crude oil - one of the fastest growing parts of

6 the rail business - analysts expect nearly all railroads to post strong fourth-quarter profit gains. The growth of crude-by-rail transport should start slowing as cheaper pipelines become available. Also, lower fuel prices will trim the price advantage trains have had over trucks in recent years. Industry researchers have found that shippers are switching back to truck transport at a higher rate than to rail for the first time since The fourth option is to replace the frantic fracking in the Bakken Shale and the development of the Canadian tar sands oil with investment in non-fossil sources. Renewable sources of energy sources such as nuclear, solar, wind, hydro, biomass and geothermal must be advanced. Even the American Petroleum Institute s annual report devoted nearly half of its space to alternative energy sources. The strategy of all of the above energy source development is building renewed interest. Please contact steve.alviene@cseainc.org if you would like additional information regarding this article, have questions or would like to arrange for a speaker on this topic.