Feds Issue Emergency Order On Crude Oil Trains 211
Hugh Pickens DOT Com (2995471) writes "Joan Lowy writes for AP that the Department of Transportation has issued an emergency order requiring that railroads inform state emergency management officials about the movement of large shipments of crude oil through their states and urged shippers not to use older model tanks cars that are easily ruptured in accidents, even at slow speeds. The emergency order follows a warning two weeks ago from outgoing National Transportation Safety Board Chairwoman Deborah Hersman that the department risks a 'higher body count' as the result of fiery oil train accidents if it waits for new safety regulations to become final. There have been nine oil train derailments in the U.S. and Canada since March of last year, many of them resulting in intense fires and sometimes the evacuation of nearby residents, according to the NTSB. The latest was last week, when a CSX train carrying Bakken crude derailed in downtown Lynchburg, Va., sending three tank cars into the James River and shooting flames and black smoke into the air. Concern about the safe transport of crude oil was heightened after a runaway oil train derailed and then exploded last July in the small town of Lac-Megantic in Canada, just across the border from Maine. More than 60 tank cars spilled more than 1.3 million gallons of oil. Forty-seven people were killed and 30 buildings destroyed in the resulting inferno. Hersman says that over her 10 years on the board she has 'seen a lot of difficulty when it comes to safely rules being implemented if we don't have a high enough body count. That is a tombstone mentality. We know the steps that will prevent or mitigate these accidents. What is missing is the will to require people to do so.'"
Environmentalists eat your heart out. (Score:5, Insightful)
You know, a PIPELINE would be a lot safer way of transporting crude oil around the country... Stopping the construction of pipelines results in more of these rail car accidents you know.
Re:Environmentalists eat your heart out. (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah, we've obviously never had major pipeline spills.
Re:Environmentalists eat your heart out. (Score:4, Insightful)
Our civilization is built on oil-derived products, we do not have a choice of not shipping it. If we stop shipping oil significant portion of human population will starve and/or freeze and die.
Given our available shipping choices, pipelines are by far safest and energy efficient way to do it.
Re:Environmentalists eat your heart out. (Score:5, Insightful)
Our civilization is built on oil-derived products, we do not have a choice of not shipping it.
In the short term. We should construct incentive networks that slowly migrate off fossil fuels while the costs are reasonable. We are not doing that, and it's going to be hazardous to our entire system.
Building pipelines, while occasionally useful and necessary, should be done with due attention for the long term economic incentives it creates.
Re: (Score:2)
As long as we are willing to include nuclear in that equation, than I agree.
Without a cheap storage mechanism, solar/wind/etc. cannot satisfy the baseline demand of the power grid. Yes, there are ways to do that. They also impact the environment and come with a steep cost.
Re:Environmentalists eat your heart out. (Score:5, Insightful)
Nuclear is absolutely fantastic, because when done correctly, you create your next generation of fuel using this generation. Potentially thousands of years of energy supply.
Solar and wind are superior outside of financial constraints, because they don't have any catastrophic failures possible from poor maintenance.
Properly disincentivize fossil fuels gradually over the course of a couple decades, through taxes, tariffs, and regulations, and let the slack get picked up in whatever way is most market friendly.
Re:Environmentalists eat your heart out. (Score:5, Insightful)
Not the most efficient method, and historically one of the worst environmentally and the most dangerous to large populations when there is a failure. Don't get me wrong, I am a huge proponent of hydro power, but it's not without severe disadvantages.
Re: (Score:2)
There's also compressed air storage (CPES) which is more efficient, but it's a technical solution that requires a higher infrastructure.
Most energy use in the US is for heating and cooling buildings. Converting existing coal plants to cogeneration could address most of that, by doubling efficiency, as most First World nations do.
Re: (Score:2)
Pumped storage reservoirs aren't sitting available and unused. Even reservoirs specifically built for pumped storage have been converted to regular dual use lakes due to public pressure.
They're looking at moving gravel up and down hills on electric dump vehicles for similar results. Prototype 'pumped storage' rail lines exist. Then all you need is a hill with a reasonable grade.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Environmentalists eat your heart out. (Score:5, Interesting)
There is enough material on the planet, and enough insolation on the planet to provide well over 100% of our energy needs by means of solar. That's a bit of a pipe dream, so reasonable migration steps with nuclear and slowly diminishing fossil fuel dependency is entirely doable. And it would cost us a fraction of our GDP.
Of all major industries, energy is the field with the lowest ratio of research funding to revenue(most are about 5%, medicine is about 15%, energy is like 1-2%). It's entirely clear we're just not trying much.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
For the record, I am pro-nuclear/alternative/geothermal. Still, meaningfully diminishing fossil fuel dependency is not achievable at our present technological levels when faced wi
Re: (Score:3)
Population growth isn't the big deal we make it out to be. Sort of. The first world has very slow-to-negative population growth. The third world shows signs of slowing down, and, currently, at least, much lower per capital energy usage.
Re: (Score:3)
In the past we had wars and epidemics to keeping population in check. We largely mitigated these problems. Can you suggest somet
Re:Environmentalists eat your heart out. (Score:5, Insightful)
Of all major industries, energy is the field with the lowest ratio of research funding to revenue
which they more than compensate for via ownership of a major political party.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Hence the need to well, do the migration as soon as possible. I mean, instead of waiting for the inevitable oil crash, why don't we
Re: (Score:2)
The Silver Bullet has already been discovered, and it is nuclear power. Yes, it has downsides, and I'm becoming more convinced that solar and wind will undercut its price so we never need to fully rely on it. Yet I take quite a bit of comfort that it is there. It is physically possible to sustain our "way of life" while destroying only a little of the environment. The political objections will melt away
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
we do not have a choice of not shipping it. If we stop shipping oil significant portion of human population will starve and/or freeze and die
There's always choices. People can be relocated to areas where they don't need heating oil, using far less energy than a winter's heating oil contains.
We've dug a pretty deep hole with the food from oil thing, but that was a hole of our own digging, and will be reversed one way or another before the oil runs out - why not start today?
Re:Environmentalists eat your heart out. (Score:5, Insightful)
And what other choice is there? Even if AGW isn't happening (and all but the smallest fraction of experts in fields related to climatology say it is), sooner or later the economics of using a non-renewable energy source are going to kick us in the balls.
Re:Environmentalists eat your heart out. (Score:4, Insightful)
It already kind of kicked the commuter society in the balls through gas prices. "Peak oil" happened, and we all just kinda grinned and bore it through extremely rapid commodity inflation.
We didn't listen, when it would have been cheap to do so, so now it's a little more expensive to address(and we're still not doing anything about it).
Re:Environmentalists eat your heart out. (Score:4, Insightful)
Sure, we can learn to live in sustainable-energy-using urban centers and bike to work, but we can't learn to not eat. This is why oil is so crucial for our civilization.
Re: (Score:2)
Contemporary industrial farming practices consume (via combustion or conversion into fertilizer) 10 calories of petro-chemical energy for every 1 calorie of food energy produced.
Re: (Score:2)
So, we should be converting fossil fuel directly to foodstuffs, then?
Oil is incredibly inefficient in all its forms of use - what's the efficiency of an internal combustion engine? How about heating a home with a furnace, how much heat is lost out the flue? When you make electricity with an oil fired generator, what's the efficiency there? Take any of these figures and square, or maybe cube them to account for multiple steps involved in producing and delivering food - 10% seems optimistic to me.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
If you said that to a stranger in a face-to-face conversation, I think most would take offense.
Re:Environmentalists eat your heart out. (Score:5, Insightful)
You're right, pipelines built in the 1930s do fail from time to time. Mainly because it's so hard to build new ones that pipeline companies try to run old pipelines at as high pressure as they can get away with. You should see the difference in how pipelines used to be constructed vs how they are built now. A new pipeline is an amazing feat of engineering. Old pipelines were just whatever pipe they could find laid in the ground.
To make an obligatory Slashdot car analogy: I am suggesting we make new planes so people will be able to travel safer than driving a car. You come back with "yeah, we've obviously never had major plane crashes".
Re:Environmentalists eat your heart out. (Score:5, Informative)
A new pipeline is an amazing feat of engineering. Old pipelines were just whatever pipe they could find laid in the ground.
All the engineering in the world means dick if you never inspect it and actively lobby against mandatory spill detection technologies because they make pipelines more expensive.
To make an obligatory Slashdot car analogy: I am suggesting we make new planes so people will be able to travel safer than driving a car. You come back with "yeah, we've obviously never had major plane crashes".
Airplanes have been having a lot more problems since the airlines started off-shoring maintenance.
It's been an ongoing problem for ~10 years now.
It's no surprise that the cheaper route is not the safer route when it comes to planes and pipelines.
Re:Environmentalists eat your heart out. (Score:5, Insightful)
Never inspecting things is not allowed actually... http://primis.phmsa.dot.gov/co... [dot.gov]
Spill detection is present on every pipeline, it's just a matter of how sensitive it is. It is in a pipeline's best interest to keep product in the pipe as a leak is lost product even if you didn't have to worry about disasters and cleanup.
Airplanes have the same problem as pipelines. A lot of them were made a long time ago, and people have been trying to string them along past their design lifespans. New pipelines are far safer than old pipelines. Trying to block construction or replacement of pipelines is counter to making pipeline disasters less likely.
Re: (Score:2)
Not just pipelines made in the 1930s - leaky pipelines are a feature of the system, it costs too much to keep them 100% intact, so a little leak here and there goes unrepaired for long periods of time.
We looked at buying acreage in East Texas, pipeline easements are pretty common there, as are contamination spots from pipeline leaks.
Re:Environmentalists eat your heart out. (Score:4)
Yeah, we've obviously never had major pipeline spills.
Major pipeline spills are less common and don't kill dozens of people.
Re: (Score:3)
All in all, pipelines are safer than trains are safer than supertankers, but each has its place and none are perfect.
Re: (Score:3)
The vast majority of oil is shipped by pipeline or boat. The amount shipped by rail and truck is very small. It's only been used recently because of environmental opposition to pipelines. We're talking a few percent of what's shipped by pipeline or boat.
Yet train derailments and truck crashes spill more oil than pipelines. The spills are smaller, a few hundred barrels, so they don't make a lot of news. When pipelines or boats spill, its usually either a major national news event because of the volume, or it
Re: (Score:2)
"The vast majority of oil is shipped by pipeline or boat. The amount shipped by rail and truck is very small. It's only been used recently because of environmental opposition to pipelines. We're talking a few percent of what's shipped by pipeline or boat."
So why don't they ship this oil by boat then?
Re: (Score:3)
So why don't they ship this oil by boat then?
Because landlocked states and provinces aren't on the water, unless you live in another universe where places like North Dakota and Alberta have places that are deep enough to carry fuel loaded ships, or are on a coastline. And in other cases, because the environuts block building pipelines to...did you guess the coastline? Well big shock on that one huh...
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3)
There was a pipeline from Miami International Airport to Homestead Air Force base carrying jet fuel.
A small leak under Cutler Ridge shopping mall went undetected for years, until somebody noticed the storm drains were all flammable.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Yay, someone actually responded reasonably. Thanks.
I'd say that you're right, except that trains as infrastructure continue to serve a purpose when you're not shipping oil anymore, whereas pipelines do not. Thus they can form a perverse incentive.
Re:Environmentalists eat your heart out. (Score:5, Interesting)
Pipelines can ship solids, liquids, and gasses, Some pipelines are fully capable of transporting crude oil, then immediately transporting refined gasoline, then natural gas, then transporting coal, without huge maintenance cycles between. A client need only purchase transport from the shipper and their load will go through the pipeline.
It surprised me that you could switch between mediums without decommissioning, fully cleaning, and then recommissioning the pipeline at great expense. Quite the opposite, pipelines do allow for low-cost changeover of medium in normal operation. You cannot pipeline water or other food-grade materials in this way.
Re: (Score:2)
Fair point, I was arguing against the longevity of fossil fuel dependency being a good thing, but my wording absolutely included a flagrant factual error.
Re: (Score:2)
I did mention you can't transport water; it occurs to me you could refine transported water to potable or grey.
Perhaps we could transport energy. The system runs high-pressure fluids; we could apply pressure at one end and drive a turbine at a demarcation point. The system could transport biofuels or synthofuels--the stored output of excess hydroelectric, wind, and geothermal by combining air and water into hydrocarbons or other fuels.
Re: (Score:2)
Tropicana used to pipeline orange juice about 1/2 mile to the Middle School my father taught at - they shut the pipeline down after a few years due to intractable contamination issues.
Re:Environmentalists eat your heart out. (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.manhattan-institute... [manhattan-institute.org]
Plenty of studies done... According to this one rail is about 4x more likely to have an incident per weight-mile. Which is still ahead of the 40x more likely when transported by road!
Re:Environmentalists eat your heart out. (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
Well, yes... but trains are romantic. Pipelines are big and ugly tubes running over the land, requiring destroying thousands of acres of forests, while train tracks just require a few rails. Pipelines require maintaining hundreds of miles of pipe (at which, of course, we know technology will fail), while train cars are nice, small, human-manageable pieces that can be inspected with just a quick visual check. Pipelines are managed by people in suits in a remote office in a big city somewhere. Trains are run
Re:Environmentalists eat your heart out. (Score:4, Insightful)
Let me know when the people whose ares have a pipeline get a piece of the action.
Rails are already built.
And a rail accidents is trivial spill next to a pipeline accident.
But hey, lets take all the risk and damage so some company can make more money, and put the risk on the people.
Re: (Score:3)
And a rail accidents is trivial spill next to a pipeline accident.
Whatever you say [wikipedia.org].
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Environmentalists eat your heart out. (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, I've been saying this for a while. Pipelines are way safer but we also need stricter pipeline regulations.
I have three oil pipelines that go through my property. While they are pretty solid, the pipeline companies refuse to do any maintenance (such as when one becomes uncovered in a creek bed where it's supposed to be at least 3 feet underground) until you call the news crews out.
Re:Environmentalists eat your heart out. (Score:5, Informative)
I just hope you call before you dig... The biggest single cause of pipeline releases is 3rd party excavation damage:
http://primis.phmsa.dot.gov/co... [dot.gov]
Re: (Score:2)
Why would they inspect when they've got you doing their work for them?
Re: Environmentalists eat your heart out. (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
I was being facetious.
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/09/09/business/energy-environment/pipeline-spills.html [nytimes.com]
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
You know, a PIPELINE would be a lot safer way of transporting crude oil around the country... Stopping the construction of pipelines results in more of these rail car accidents you know.
Right. The problem is that President 1%'s buddy Warren Buffett owns a railroad, not a pipeline.
Do the math.
Re:Environmentalists eat your heart out. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
You make me think: baby seal catapults probably are viable competition for Amazon drone delivery - more likely to be cleared for legal deployment by the FA whatever that regulates baby seals, and more gentle on the cargo than UPS delivery.
Re: (Score:2)
The pipeline is intended to carry canadian tar sand crude down to the refineries in the gulf, thats why it crosses the canadian border (and has been put on hold by the state dept.
Piping all this oil down to the gulf is stupid
They should refine it in North Dakota
where there is lots of oil, and also natural gas to power the refinery
Re: (Score:3)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L... [wikipedia.org]
North Dakota has a total of 80MBBL/day refining capacity. Louisiana has 3,310MBBL/day capacity. Texas also has a huge amount. Oh you want to build a new refinery? Would that be easier or harder than approval for a new pipeline? A new refinery hasn't been built in the US since 1976.
Re: (Score:2)
Also, what would you do with all the fuel you just refined in North Dakota? You'd just have to build a pipeline to carry all the products to the rest of the nation instead...
Re: (Score:2)
Ya know, long pipelines (100s of miles) leak, all of them, all the time. Installing and maintaining a pipeline is a huge expense, even compared to a railroad.
That being said, they have their places.
Re: (Score:2)
http://www.manhattan-institute... [manhattan-institute.org]
Here's a hint, the vast majority of pipelines are protected for hundreds of miles. They are buried underground! Trains travel above the ground where they are subject to weather, traffic, etc. Also, pipeline releases are easier to recover and clean up than rail accidents. The data doesn't lie.
Re: (Score:2)
The data doesn't lie.
That paper is not about facts but statistics [bizjournals.com] (as in "lies, damned lies, and statistics" [wikipedia.org]). Not the same thing.
Re: (Score:2)
Your linked article is by a guest contributor who doesn't actually debunk any of the data.
Under Pipelines and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration requirements, rail operators must report all spills. Pipelines are only required to report those over five gallons.
It’s important to note that most rail spills are small and occur during the filling of tank cars. These spills, while reported, are cleaned up immediately. Pipeline spills more often are catastrophic events. When a pipeline ruptures, a tremendous amount of oil is released, sometimes in a remote or hard-to-access area.
So the argument is that most pipeline spills are catastrophic, but they don't count the non-catastrophic ones? Many of the pipeline related spills are also small spills that are cleaned up immediately at pipeline stations.
Even the units of measurement employed by the two industries betray the immense difference in scale between the two modes. For rail, crude oil is typically measured in gallons, while pipelines measure it in barrels. It takes 42 gallons of oil to equal one barrel.
Except the article that he is debunking uses units of ton-miles, and uses it consistently between transportation methods. The fact that pipelines use barrels and rail cars gallons has nothing to do wi
Re: (Score:2)
Really? http://www.enbridge.com/Bakken... [enbridge.com] Maybe you need a reality reset.
Re: (Score:2)
Yea but not in *MY* back yard!
You sound like the anti-nuke nuts, there's two major oil and LNG pipelines that run through my town. And I live within 100km of the largest nuclear reactor complex in North America(Bruce Nuclear [wikipedia.org]). I don't have a problem with it. The oil pipelines have been there since the 60's, and there hasn't been a problem. We've had more derailments, and people killed by trains and transport trucks than the pipeline or even the nuclear plant has killed.
This is why we need the government regulation (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:This is why we need the government regulation (Score:5, Funny)
And, in the oxymoron stakes:
meaningful self-regulation
is a clear winner.
Make them pay the FULL cost (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
You're blaming railroads for a lot of things they have no control over:
Re: (Score:2)
This is incorrect.
>>>It requires an external source of oxygen to react
Atmosphere is a readily available and nearly unlimited source of oxygen.
Re: (Score:3)
I thought the same thing...
Also an interesting fact about the Lac Megantic disaster: some people near the source of the explosion are assumed to have been vaporized. Nobody knows for certain, but that's the best guess as to what happened to these people who completely disappeared.
Re: (Score:2)
The alternate guess being they where transported into another dimension. So yeah, vaporization is probably what happened:)
unless it was Jean-Claude Van Damme, in that case he was blown into an alternate dimension where he must to splits and then defeat himself.
Time for some VANDAMMAGE!
Sorry, I'm hungry and tired.
Re: (Score:2)
It's also like this in pretty much the whole rest of the world :-(
Re: (Score:2)
The whole Lac Megantic thing happened because the train lost pressure to its brakes.
Yes and no. There was a fire on the engine, the FD shut down the engine. The handbrakes according to the logs were engaged...and parts of the investigation are still on-going to determine if it was a deliberate act to derail the train.
Re: (Score:2)
This is a good question which I just did a bit of research on. I have a good understanding of a trucks air brake system and though different from a trains, have similar principals. Se this article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railway_air_brake#Westinghouse_air_brake [wikipedia.org]
A train uses air pressure to actuate the brakes but uses inverse logic to apply them. The basic principal is as the system charges via the compressor, the brakes begin to apply. Once the system reaches full pressure, the brakes release and are
Feds Issue Emergency Order On Crude Oil Trains (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Feds Issue Emergency Order On Crude Oil Trains (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
That might work if 14 year old girls were making the rules, but they aren't.
holy crap (Score:3)
"requiring that railroads inform state emergency management officials about the movement of large shipments of crude oil "
there not doing that now? that's the most basic courtesy and emergency preparedness. It's irresponsible.
Re: (Score:2)
Haha I have a friend who got hassled by cops for hauling two barrels of race gas on a trailer.
FIIMBY (Score:2)
a lot of difficulty when it comes to safely rules being implemented if we don't have a high enough body count
Congress won't really care unless it's rich people getting killed, Wall Street banks getting destroyed or the accidents are FIIMBY -- Fuck It's In My Back Yard -- (thank you The Daily Show for that acronym).
Energy in Train load: 11 Tanker Cars = 1 nucBomb (Score:3)
So how much energy is there in a train load of Cude Oil?
Energy denisty of crude oil ~46MJ/Kg (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density)
DOT-111 tanker car of Lac Magantic fire is 131,000 L (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DOT-111_tank_car)
Assuming 1L/1Kg - some of these oils float some of the really thick stuff sinks.
Per Tanker car 6.026x10^12 J/ Tank Car.
Little Boy explosion was equivalent to 16,000 tons of TNT (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Boy)
16000 tons of TNT is 66944000 MJ of energy (http://www.kylesconverter.com/energy,-work,-and-heat/megajoules-to-tons-of-tnt).
Or 1 Litte Boy = 66.944x10^12 J
or 1 Little Boy = 11.11 Tanker Cars of Crude Oil
The DOT is the problem... (Score:2)
We see these trains every day (Score:2)
Easy (Score:2)
Make the companies (and executives) legally liable when disasters happen because of defective equipment or not enough security measures.
Similar incident in Italy (Score:2)
Rail line routes (Score:2)
I live a couple hours from Lynchburg, and one of those rail lines passes through my town. The problem is these railways were laid down in the late 1800s, and either the rail lines were specifically routed through cities, or towns were literally built on or moved to be on the rail lines. So it is a conundrum that in areas like this, the rails pass through every small town along the way, yet they are now beginning to haul more dangerous cargo, like oil. The funny thing is we no longer have passenger servic
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
I wonder what you'd be saying if this article were about a pipeline spill instead...
Re: (Score:2)
The difference in safety and major spills is infinitesimally small and pipelines cause more minor leaks.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
http://www.csmonitor.com/Envir... [csmonitor.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Why not just end subsidies for oil and gas? There, problem solved.
Here is why it will not happen anytime soon, just replace the context with Global Warming/Climate Change/Climate Disruption:
Hersman says that over her 10 years on the board she has 'seen a lot of difficulty when it comes to safely rules being implemented if we don't have a high enough body count. That is a tombstone mentality. We know the steps that will prevent or mitigate
They are waiting for a high enough body count. Considering the magnitude of the changes required to address Climate Change in any meaningful way and the resulting short term costs to industry, I'd guesstimate that the body count will have to be shockingly significant, but by then it will all probably be too late to do anything anyway...
Re: (Score:3)
Could we at least number the anonymous cowards, I'd like to know if the crap is coming from one blabbermouth or if there's a team of sock puppets at work.
It would make it easier to get a better signal to noise ratio.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
To be fair, Keystone deserves all the hate and fury it can attract. They go on TV talking about how misunderstood the Keystone project is, and spout irrelevant bullshit.
The worst claim I've heard: Keystone is good because hundreds of thousands of US Construction Workers think it should go through. That's like saying abolishing capital punishment is good because hundreds of child rapist-murderers think we should do so. It's like saying raising the minimum liability insurance requirements is good becau
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
I will tell you we don't want it here unless you can route it around environmentally sensitive areas like the sand hills and the Ogallala aquifer
You realize there's so many in-use pipelines in both those areas now it would boggle your mind right? And besides that, they already said they'd route around it if that would make people happy and the environuts are still throwing a hissy fit over it.
Re: (Score:3)
"Amtrak's passenger services are sparse compared with Europe's. But America's freight railways are one of the unsung transport successes of the past 30 years. They are universally recognised in the industry as the best in the world."
http://www.economist.com/node/... [economist.com]