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Oil Firms Agree to Pay Millions in Compensation for Quebec Train Blast
Cross-posted from the Economy forum, where I maintain a link farm to sites about oil train safety.
Full disclosure: I own shares of railroad stocks. I post only in the interest of making this information better known.
Too late for LBN. Hat tip, Lackawanna484 at Trainorders: Oil companies agree to pay share of Lac Megantic - precedent?
Oil Firms Agree to Pay Millions in Compensation for Quebec Train Blast
By Russell Gold and David George-Cosh
@itsdgc
david.george-cosh@wsj.com
Updated June 10, 2015 9:36 p.m. ET
Oil companies have quietly agreed to pay tens of millions of dollars into a compensation fund for deaths and damage caused by a 2013 oil-train explosion in Quebec, though the energy industry has maintained it wasn’t responsible for the disaster. ... Royal Dutch Shell PLC, Marathon Oil Corp., ConocoPhillips, Irving Oil Ltd. and others have contributed to a $345 million fund for victims of the accident in Lac-Mégantic, according to court filings and interviews.
If U.S. and Canadian courts approve the fund, the companies would be shielded from several lawsuits claiming wrongful death and negligence in connection with the tragedy.
Montreal, Maine & Atlantic Railway Ltd., the small railroad hauling the crude oil, sought bankruptcy protection soon after the accident, in which an unattended train carrying oil from North Dakota’s Bakken Shale formation derailed and erupted into flames, killing 47.
A trustee appointed by the bankruptcy court, who has approved the compensation fund, contended in court filings that oil producers were well aware the oil they were selling was dangerously volatile and failed to take action to make transporting it safer. ... Oil companies, however, have said that their responsibility ended with properly labeling the crude oil after pumping it out of the ground, which they say they did.
@itsdgc
david.george-cosh@wsj.com
Updated June 10, 2015 9:36 p.m. ET
Oil companies have quietly agreed to pay tens of millions of dollars into a compensation fund for deaths and damage caused by a 2013 oil-train explosion in Quebec, though the energy industry has maintained it wasn’t responsible for the disaster. ... Royal Dutch Shell PLC, Marathon Oil Corp., ConocoPhillips, Irving Oil Ltd. and others have contributed to a $345 million fund for victims of the accident in Lac-Mégantic, according to court filings and interviews.
If U.S. and Canadian courts approve the fund, the companies would be shielded from several lawsuits claiming wrongful death and negligence in connection with the tragedy.
Montreal, Maine & Atlantic Railway Ltd., the small railroad hauling the crude oil, sought bankruptcy protection soon after the accident, in which an unattended train carrying oil from North Dakota’s Bakken Shale formation derailed and erupted into flames, killing 47.
A trustee appointed by the bankruptcy court, who has approved the compensation fund, contended in court filings that oil producers were well aware the oil they were selling was dangerously volatile and failed to take action to make transporting it safer. ... Oil companies, however, have said that their responsibility ended with properly labeling the crude oil after pumping it out of the ground, which they say they did.