Posted on 07/10/2013 10:47:48 AM PDT by thackney
As the smoke clears (literally) in Lac-Megantic, Quebec, after a runaway train packed with crude oil tankers crashed July 6, the oil industry is coming to terms with a business that has perhaps grown too far too fast. The Lac-Megantic accident is shining an unwelcome spotlight on the lack of regulatory oversight on oil by rail in both the US and Canada. The fact that the rail cars (belonging to the Maine, Montreal & Atlantic rail company) that crashed and exploded were considered unfit to carry hazardous materials sharpens that focus.
Getting landlocked crude out of newer fields in North Dakota, Canada and other far flung parts of North America has become an obsession with producers, traders and refiners, the latter group looking lustfully at the cheaper feedstock.
The oil rush has changed the face of rail in North America. In a country where passenger and cargo-bearing rail was largely replaced by the car and large 18-wheel trucks half a century ago, the speed with which new railroad lines, railcars and loading facilities are being built is simply astonishing.
Today around one million barrels per day of crude oil is moved via rail across the US and Canada. To put that into perspective, it equates to more than the total daily output of the UK North Sea, which fell below 1.0m b/d last year. Or to roughly four VLCC’s worth of crude oil every week. In other words, it is a lot of oil.
And this is set to grow. In the US alone, crude by rail shipments are expected to reach to near 1.10 million b/d at the end of 2014, up from about 718,000 b/d this month and about 156,000 b/d in January of 2012, according to Bentek Energy, a unit of Platts.
The Railway Association of Canada estimated that as many as 140,000 carloads of crude, totaling about 91 million barrels, will be shipped on Canadian tracks this year, compared with 500 carloads, or about 325,000 barrels, in 2009.
But the headlong dive into crude by rail may have just been stopped short by the Lac-Megantic incident. And, just as the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska in 1989 spelled the end of single-hull oil tankers coming to the US (and banned them worldwide in 2010), the Lac-Megantic crash would spell the end of using DOT-111A railcars. And it could herald a new rash of regulation for the rail industry.
A US National Transportation Safety Board study in 2012 said that 69% of tank cars are DOT-111A. In Canada, these are known as CTX-111A, and comprise 80% of the fleet, according to Canada Transportation Safety Board’s chief investigator Donald Ross.
Ross said that changes as a result of the MM&A investigation could include thicker steel or shields for the tank cars. The American NTSB had already changed the specifications of DOT-111 from October 2011 to include thicker shells and a ½ inch thick head shield. But there is no rule on retrofitting existing cars, which have a long service life.
Like the single-hull tanker post-Exxon Valdez, DOT-111As could be the next casualty of the oil rush in North America.
But there are other issues raising their ugly heads, including the state of some of the railroad tracks around both countries. While the oil industry is spending billions on railcars and loading/unloading facilities, who is spending the money to maintain and upgrade the railroads?
As Avrom Shtern, a rail-transport policy representative with Montreal-based Green Coalition, said in Platts Oilgram News July 9, Canadian government’s budget cuts have left the rail industry to police itself. “That’s unacceptable. You can’t just write rules and expect the railways to police themselves,” he said.
Also, questions are rife over the capital adequacy of smaller gathering and distribution companies such as World Fuel, which owned the oil on board the MM&A train. Will they have the financial stability to survive a lawsuit?
The crash was only a few days ago, so most of these questions will be answered over time. Crude by rail has come a long way in a short time. But the Quebec accident could slow the pace and the way in which the industry grows going forward, in both Canada and the US.
After the Nantes siding there is only single track into town until the yard switches. How does the end of the train get ahead of the front of the train? The TSB pic of the (blue) locomotive make it look upright and still on the track.
The scribes still don't have their story straight.
Probably not smokers, likely some of the few (but not enough) hand brakes set.
I’ve tried to set light crude oil on fire with a lit cigarette. (semi-controlled experiment in a safety discussion during oil field construction) I’m convinced it is essential impossible. Maybe some with a extreme amounts of specific light ends but I doubt it.
I see that. It is hard to believe that the locomotives went through before that destruction, but there was good track to haul them back through that mess towards the original parking location.
Well, there’s the pic of the loco on fire and published outtakes of interviews with the Nantes FD chief.
Caption reads:
MMA #1 is leaving Nantes, for Montreal, after switching the MMA Remote control caboose, and shuffling some units. The locos (along with the Remote Control caboose) for MMA #2 leaving in the evening, are in the siding.
MMA #1 and #2 are the "oil trains" to the Irving refinery in St. John, so we're talking about the same trains at the same location where #2 (the eastbound train) was parked.
And, apparently, an overnight at this location is SOP.
It has been really rare to see any pic of the locomotive string post accident.
I can see the engines making a curve that the tank cars didn’t.
What I don’t comprehend is enough useable track left after this destruction to move the engines back through the same spot towards the initial location before they rolled downhill to Lac-Megantic.
"Journalists" get all sorts of facts wrong.
I'm sure that parking overnight with one loco running to keep the whole train brakes on was SOP.
Too bad there was a fire in an unattended vehicle.
There is double track (siding) from the edge of Nantes towards Lac-Megantic for ~1.4 miles.
Probably. But I am sure setting enough handbrakes to hold it if that failed was also in the manual, even if not always done.
Certainly it is now...
What could possibly go wrong with leaving an unlocked, giant, 27 to 37 year old internal combustion engined vehicle idling on a steep driveway overnight?
Also, if tank cars now rent for $100/day, 72 of them is ~$300/hr. It would seem that one could hire someone to drive them on their way for less than $300/hr rather than let them sit overnight.
Connected to how many gallons of potential fuel?
20,000? x 72 gal.
Thanks for the timeline.
That the MMA employees didn’t know to have at least one engine running is startling, to say the least.
Not having set hand brakes is the biggest failure in my opinion. That was the fail safe procedure.
"On Monday morning, Lac-Mégantic fire chief Denis Lauzon appeared to contradict Burkhardt’s account that engineer Tom Harding moved some of the cars to safety, saying it was one of his volunteer firefighters who works for a company employed to tow train cars along the tracks that was asked to get as many rail cars away from the explosion as possible to prevent them catching fire.
“They were my firefighters,” Lauzon said."
I think this came out on Monday. It's definitely a problem to get the details of this event sorted out.
I saw a pic of Nantes from the next morning that showed some boxcars or lumber racks sitting on the siding.
I suppose the RR rep(s) after the fire could have cut off the locomotives and stuck them on part of the siding leaving the tank cars by themselves. That doesn't seem likely based on the limited info available about just who those particular RR folk(s) were.
Nor can I find a theory that allows the tank cars to get in front of this with both parts of the train still on the track.
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