scienceplease 2
Trustworthy Freedom Fighter
Joined: 06 Apr 2009
Posts: 1702
|
 Posted: Tue Mar 10, 2015 3:56 pm Post subject: America on fire: multiple oil train disasters |
 |
|
What on earth is going on?
Fracking disasters, pipeline spills and now multiple train derailments across the USA. Quite astonishing. Anything to push up the price of Oil perhaps? 
http://www.salon.com/2015/03/10/america_is_literally_on_fire_how_out_o f_control_oil_spills_are_destroying_our_population_centers/
| Quote: |
America is literally on fire: How out-of-control oil spills are destroying our population centers
Disasters are raging with such force and regularity that firefighters have to give up. Welcome to the new reality
David Dayen
It’s a good bet that someplace in North America is on fire right now, raging so out of control that officials have to let it burn itself out. And it happened because highly flammable oil was placed on a train for shipping, and something went drastically wrong. Because so much oil is transported by rail these days, the probabilities of catastrophe have elevated significantly. We haven’t ruined a major population center yet only through dumb luck; and we haven’t cracked down on this treacherous practice only because of the enormous power of the industry.
Last Thursday, 21 oil tanker cars derailed near Galena, Illinois, and five of them burned for three days. Firefighters gave up combating it because of the intensity of the heat. Tanks tumbled into a bank along the Mississippi River, threatening the Upper Mississippi National Wildlife and Fish Refuge. The EPA said the fire posed an “imminent and substantial danger” to the river. On Saturday, another train caught fire near Gogama, Ontario, damaging a bridge and sending five tank cars into the water. A similar train fire occurred on Feb. 14 near the Ontario town of Timmis, and on Feb. 16 in the almost perfectly named town of Mount Carbon, West Virginia. In all, over the past five weeks there have been five crude oil train derailments, threatening ecosystems and human health. You can follow all the “action” at the DOT-111 Reader.
The industry estimates that 9,500 carloads of oil moved along rail lines in 2008. In 2014 that number jumped to 500,000 carloads, transporting 15 billion gallons of crude. By some estimates that could double this year. Moreover, harder-to-reach oil, from the Bakken shale of North Dakota to the tar sands of Alberta, Canada, is more flammable and explosive, igniting at much lower temperatures, according to U.S. regulators.
The exponential increase of shipping more dangerous product just magnifies the risk. These trains – or bombs on wheels, if you prefer – pass through big cities like Philadelphia, Seattle, Newark and Chicago. A derailment in a big city would be very destructive; when the relatively tiny town of Lac-Mégantic, Quebec (population 5,932), suffered a runaway train explosion in its downtown in 2013, 47 people died and $1.2 billion in property was damaged, making it the worst train disaster in Canada since 1864. So continuing to run these trains through major cities is like lighting a fuse to dynamite.
Oil companies pledged a commitment to safety by improving the quality of the tank cars, replacing thin-skinned DOT-111 cars with a new model called CPC-1232. But that hasn’t mattered a bit; the Galena derailment involved these allegedly safer CPC-1232s, as have several other recent tragedies.
Those who respond to oil train derailments by claiming that the Keystone XL pipeline would solve the problem neglect the fact that a pipeline would not be able to carry even half of what flows from the Bakken region. More important, because of the collapse in oil prices, new infrastructure like a pipeline has ceased to make economic sense, relative to the existing infrastructure of transporting by rail.
Perhaps the scariest part of all of this is the perilous financial state of the oil industry today, which if anything will increase the danger. Energy companies are rapidly going bankrupt, as they cannot service debt with lower oil revenue. Companies on the edge will have to cut costs to keep afloat, and when costs are at issue, traditionally safety goes out the window.
What can be done about these massive explosions-in-waiting currently traipsing around the country? The Department of Transportation did propose new rules last July, to phase out the old DOT-111 cars, increase speed limit requirements and improve brakes. They plan to finalize those rules in May, after missing an initial deadline. But DoT’s proposal did not include a rule that oil companies remove explosive gases, including excess natural gas, from their shipments. A state version of that rule in North Dakota is supposed to take effect April 1.
According to a report in Reuters, the White House considered a provision to remove these volatile gases (known in the industry as “light ends”), but ultimately punted, letting North Dakota rules govern. Federal officials were concerned about their jurisdiction to dictate treatment of light ends. But critics believe the federal government relying on North Dakota – a conservative state not exactly known for its strict adherence to regulations – increases the risk of shipping oil by rail. That’s especially concerning when you consider that the trains travel all across the country, and that some Bakken shale comes from neighboring states like Montana. For their part, the White House denied they held off on improving oil train safety.
Sen. Chuck Schumer urged federal regulators to mandate the removal of light ends from crude oil in a letter last week, and Dick Durbin, whose state was charred by the Galena disaster, called for strengthening tank cars. There are indications that the Galena tank cars, though the stronger CPC-1232, were “unjacketed,” without insulated steel shells.
The DoT regulations will finally emerge from the Office of Management and Budget’s internal process in May. Officials at the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, which analyzes federal regulations for OMB, held at least 10 meetings with the oil and rail industries last spring, after initially receiving the rules. That includes meetings with the biggest oil-by-rail company, BNSF, a division of Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway. Basically, the oil companies point to track maintenance, and the rail companies point to inadequate tank cars. Whatever doesn’t cost them money is what they blame.
Increased domestic oil production is always depicted as an unalloyed good, with no discussion of the costs, like turning trains into bombs nationwide. There’s reason to believe that no tank car is safe enough to carry something this volatile, and that the risks exceed what the public should reasonably bear. DoT has nonchalantly predicted 10 derailments a year on oil trains, with billions in damages. If anything that’s an underestimate.
One reason the planet continues to boil is that oil companies have been allowed to externalize their costs onto government. Oil appears “cheaper” than solar or wind, because these costs never come into account. But solar power doesn’t blow up while being carried through a major city on a train. And if we want to seriously talk about what kind of energy we can afford in the future, that has to enter the conversation. |
|
|
scienceplease 2
Trustworthy Freedom Fighter
Joined: 06 Apr 2009
Posts: 1702
|
| Posted: Wed Mar 11, 2015 9:54 pm Post subject: |
|
|
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/03/10/3631569/ohio-yellowstone-m ississippi-river-oil-spills/
| Quote: | We Keep Spilling Oil Into America’s Greatest Rivers
by Emily Atkin Posted on March 10, 2015 at 8:00 am
In this July,10, 2011 file photo, oil-fouled islands and a sheen on the water are seen downstream of an Exxon Mobil crude pipeline that broke beneath the Yellowstone River. In the last year, oil spills have continued to contaminate great North American rivers, including Yellowstone.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency issued a grave warning about the Mississippi River on Saturday. Because of an oil spill, it said, the cultural landmark is in “imminent and substantial danger” of being contaminated.
The oil spill came from a train carrying 103 cars of Bakken crude oil from North Dakota. On Thursday afternoon, 17 cars of that train derailed in northern Illinois, each carrying approximately 30,000 gallons of crude. EPA officials aren’t sure how much oil has spilled, but noted that a seasonal wetland has already been affected. The river, one of its tributaries, and the Upper Mississippi National Wildlife and Fish Refuge are all in danger of contamination, the agency said.
This isn’t the first time in recent months that one of North America’s most powerful and historic rivers have been threatened by oil. In the last year, the Mississippi, the Yellowstone, the Missouri, and the Ohio Rivers have been contaminated because of oil train derailments, barge crashes, and pipeline spills. Here are some of the more significant incidents.
Mississippi River
In addition to the spill it’s been subjected to this week, the Mississippi River got a taste of an unknown amount of ethanol last month, after a freight train derailed and slid on to the frozen river in Iowa.
That incident was almost exactly a year after a more significant incident, when 31,500 gallons of light crude spilled into the river in Louisiana. The spill occurred when a barge carrying oil crashed into a tugboat between Baton Rouge and New Orleans. Sixty-five miles of the river had to be shut down after the incident to allow for clean-up.
Some bonus barge incidents from years past on the Mississippi: In 2013, a barge carrying 80,000 gallons of oil crashed into a rail bridge, spilling oil and causing a sheen as far as three miles away. In 2012, another oil barge crashed into a construction bridge, spilling less than 10,000 gallons of oil. And in 2008, about 283,000 gallons of oil spilled into the river when a barge broke in half after a collision.
Yellowstone River
The Yellowstone River was the victim of arguably one of the most tragic oil-related mishaps so far in 2015. In January, a pipeline underneath the river breached, letting out 50,000 gallons of crude oil.
Thousands of Montana residents were told not to drink their water because of potential contamination. And clean-up proved difficult, because the river was so frozen over that oil became trapped underneath thick sheets of ice. Cleanup crews had to bore holes in the ice and attempt to vacuum it up.
For some Montanans, the January spill brought unwelcome nostalgia. In July 2011, 63,000 gallons of crude poured into the Yellowstone River, about 200 miles upstream.
Ohio River
It wasn’t a huge spill, but the incident that caused up to 8,000 gallons of diesel to leak into the Ohio River last August certainly had a large impact. Cincinnati’s water department was forced to temporarily shut down intake valves, and 15 miles of the river was closed off to transportation. The spill took several days to fully clean up.
A few months before that, about 1,600 gallons of an oil-based lubricant leaked into a tributary of the Ohio River after an equipment failure at an oil and gas well. The oil-based fluid is called “mud,” and is used to lubricate the equipment in the well bore during drilling.
Missouri River
This was a big one. While not oil per se, it was the largest-ever spill of saltwater drilling waste in North Dakota. Nearly 3 million gallons of the waste — which is up to eight times saltier than seawater and lethal to vegetation — spilled from a North Dakota pipeline in January, eventually making it to the Missouri River, the Associated Press reported.
It’s not clear how much of the saltwater, otherwise known as brine, got into the Missouri River. One state health official told the Associated Press that the contaminants were quickly diluted by the river water. But Karl Rockeman, the director of water quality at the North Dakota Department of Health, told the Williston Herald that “high readings” of contamination were found where the Little Muddy River — one of the creeks impacted by the spill — enters the Missouri. |
 |
|
FAQ
Search
Memberlist
Chat
Usergroups
Calendar
Register
Profile
Log in to check your private messages
Log in
