Posted on 09/11/2014 5:36:45 AM PDT by thackney
Senators and shippers complained Wednesday that widespread delays in freight rail shipments are hurting a wide array of industries and driving some companies out of business, and they expressed doubt that the railroad companies are doing all they can to fix the problem.
The delays, which escalated late last year and continued through the spring and summer, appear to be the result of too few rail cars and too much demand from shippers, officials representing the agriculture, auto and chemical industries told a hearing of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee. Lawmakers displayed a photo of a giant mound of wheat standing in the open because North Dakota farmers can’t get a railroad company to ship it.
Shipping rates are 90 percent higher than they were in 2002, but service has drastically diminished, said Calvin Dooley, president of the American Chemistry Council.
We’ve worked on lowering the floor of a few tunnels for BNSF - in OK and TX.
Ultimately, all of the Class I lines will have PTC. BNSF took one approach - do it, and the other Class I’s invested in lobbying to delay it. So its delayed...but still in progress.
I have been involved in planning stages for grand on-loading facilities in ND - they have fallen through, because investors worry Keystone will become a reality and undercut them. So the situation remains - the tank storage is not large enough and too scattered to facilitate unit trains in the traditional way, especially if the storage site doesn’t have enough siding/loop to build an entire train.
Yes, east coast refineries are probably getting more than the Gulf Coast now. But it is still moving regularly to the latter. I understand that BNSF was giving Union Pacific two trains per day at E. St. Louis for forwarding to Louisiana while BNSF was hauling another train (not sure of frequency) to the Marquis Energy’s new Hayti, Missouri river terminal (southeast corner of the state). Also, Canadian Pacific has been giving some trains to Kansas City Southern at Kansas City for forwarding to Port Arthur, Texas, IIRC.
One option is moving by rail part of the way and then pipeline the rest, or vice-versa. Union Pacific will serve a proposed unloading facility near Pontiac, Illinois if and when it is built.
Eastbound oil train traffic will increase. There is talk that the Husky refinery in Lima, Ohio may start getting both Alberta and Bakken crude by rail in the near future (and once track and unloading facilities are built).
I would expect the growth in Bakken oil by rail would be primarily east coast and some to the west. I suspect the Gulf Coast deliveries would tapper off with the growing production of light sweet from the Eagle Ford and Permian Basin.
More economic value in competing with overseas tankers versus locally produced oil.
Some info from earlier this summer:
Crude-by-rail transportation provides Bakken Shale production access to major markets
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3165951/posts
Click here to look for other BNSF Velocity data. If you change the "Weeks=" number at the end of the link... and then click the radio boxes you can get graphed data going back to January, 2005. All this info is available at that railroadpm.org website.
https://ndpipelines.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/ndpa-monthly-update-august-15-2014.pdf
http://ndpipelines.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/ndpa-monthly-update-august-15-20131.pdf
In the past year, the oil moved by pipeline out of North Dakota increased more than the oil moved by rail.
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I messed that one up. I used the latest month, not the past year. While that was true for the latest month, it was not true for 2012 versus 2013, or expectation for 2014.
It looks like the rate of change is greater for pipelines and will likely catch up and eventually exceed, it hasn’t happened yet.
Railroads are regulated at the Federal level due to Interstate Commerce rules.
LOL! Probably not - she already got elected to the Senate from Massachusetts. :)
I will check into that one.
Thank you.
Wouldn’t “dey” be more appropriate?
This or a similar thread on the same topic I think I made a joke about the Grapefruit Special
The Smathers Brothers, who had “pull”, thanks to Cuffy Meigs.
WHAT? Messiah 0bama doesn’t make the trains run on time?
Bad Communist! Bad! Bad!
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