OIL SHIPPED BY TRAIN INSTEAD.
Meanwhile, oil is being shipped from N. Dakota and Canada by rail. The increase in freight care loadings with crude oil is unprecedented in modern times. This much crude oil has not been shipped by train since the days of John Rockefeller.
Much if not most of the oil is being shipped on the Burlington Northern the majority of which is owned by none other than Warren Buffet. Do you think there is any connection here?
A train wreck of oil carrying freight cars in a unit train would be a disaster of proportions to make a pipeline leak look like mere child’s play. Train wrecks have no safety shut-off valves and they also create lots of sparks. Trains run through the heart of most populated areas, their traditional routes to serve populations for transportation. Pipelines, on the other hand, seldom transit population centers, the righ-of-way is just too expensive so they instead stick to less expensive and less populated areas.
Stranded oil is commanding a freight rate of $14 to $15 per barrell... an incredible profit margin for freight trains.
So, so true. Nebraska's legislature is working on a bill to prohibit the pipeline from passing through the state on the grounds it would contaminate the Ogallala Aquifer in the event of a leak. Well, maybe it would, say an area the size of acres not the entire aquifer which is ten of thousands of square miles or more in area. Groundwater is not some huge underground lake and is not subject to contamination like surface water is, and you'd think the people of Nebraska would have elected representatives smart enough to know the difference.
But its more likely the representatives have bought into the environmentalists arguments about local impacts when what they really want to stop is mining of the crude oil in the tar sands of northern Alberta.