New Data Sharpen Focus on Crude Oil “Bomb Train” Routes

[eridani]

http://billmoyers.com/2014/12/02/govt-data-sharpens-focus-crude-oil-train-routes/?utm_source=General+Interest&utm_campaign=f4a3eb8686-Midweek12031412_3_2014&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_4ebbe6839f-f4a3eb8686-168317741



Indeed, since 2012, when petroleum crude oil first began moving by rail in large quantities, there have been eight major accidents involving trains carrying crude in North America. In the worst of these incidents, in July, 2013, a train derailed at Lac-Mégantic, Quebec and exploded, killing 47 and burning down a quarter of the town. Six months later, another crude-bearing train derailed and exploded in Casselton, North Dakota, prompting the evacuation of most of the town’s 2,300 residents.

In those and other cases, local emergency responders were overwhelmed by the conflagrations resulting from these accidents. Residents often had no idea that such a dangerous cargo, and in such volume, was being transported through their towns.

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Only a handful of places around the country have the refinery capacity and infrastructure necessary to handle the massive amounts of oil being extracted from North Dakota’s Bakken Shale: Bakersfield, Carson, and Long Beach in California; St. James, Lake Charles and Lacassine in coastal Louisiana; Philadelphia; Paulsboro, New Jersey, and Delaware City, Delaware in the Mid-Atlantic.

These cities have become the terminuses for “unit trains” carrying up to 100 tank cars, each containing as much as 30,000 gallons of crude oil. These endpoints also have shaped the paths along which crude-bearing trains now cross hundreds of communities, many of which have never seen such traffic. Tracks all but abandoned for years have sprung back to life on account of the oil boom.

The vulnerabilities of the DOT-111 tank cars in which much of the oil is moved are well known by now. For decades, federal officials have cited concerns over their relatively thin shells, which are prone to puncturing or rupturing in an accident and releasing the hazardous material inside. They also have other components prone to damage, including protruding fittings often left unprotected, and hinged lids held on by bolts that have a history of coming loose, especially if not properly tightened by the original shipper

[Odin2005]

1. I live in Fargo, the Bakken oil trains come literally to within a block of my apartment.

They scare me.

[eridani]

2. As they should. In Seattle, when you listen to a ball game on the radio--

--you can hear those trains in the background. If one of them blew like in Canada, you'd lose 30,000 to 50,000 fans.