Oil Train

[Euclid]

As I understand it, there are three types of tank cars involved in this.  The earliest car was the 111, and everybody agrees that it is not strong enough.  The next car was the 1232, the so-called “good faith” car.  It was designed to improve the strength over the 111 car. 

It is called “good faith” because the industry assumed it would be safe enough, and they were building it prior the impending Federal regulations.  So they were making a good faith effort to build a strong enough car immediately without any Federal regulations, even though there were new Federal regulations right around the corner.  They hoped the Government would let them continue to use the 1232 cars even though they might not meet the letter of the impending Federal regulations. 

Otherwise, without that assurance, the car builders are taking a chance that newly built 1232 cars will suddenly become obsolete in a matter of months by the introduction of new Federal regulations.  So the industry is making an act of good faith by acting proactively, and they hope their effort will be rewarded by leniency of the DOT to allow the industry to use up their 1232 cars as though they are grandfathered in. Builders of the good faith cars assumed that they could reasonably anticipate the DOT conclusions that would ultimately go into their new tank car regulations.    

HOWEVER: Recent derailments have involved the “good faith” cars, and they have shown the same type of fireball reaction as happened with the 111 cars.  Obviously the good faith 1232 cars are stronger than the 111 cars, but just not enough stronger to get the job done.  This comes as a sudden revelation by actual train wrecks.  It is cold water in the face, because it shows that the “good faith” was insufficient. 

Meanwhile the Federal DOT is working on the new specifications that will become law.  This will be the 117 car.  If the industry was blindsided by the shortfall of the good faith 1232 cars, so was the Department of Transportation.  Or—maybe the DOT new all along that adding 1/8” of steel to the tank wall was not going to be nearly enough to assure the safety that everybody wants.  In any case, I suspect surprises coming from DOT that may well indeed require a tank so heavy that it won’t be able to carry much oil.  It would be a lot like vetoing the XL Pipeline. 

[Euclid]

Norm48327

Tank cars could be made strong enough to withstand an atomic bomb exploding ten feet above them. Problem is, they'd only hold one gallon of oil.

 

That is the problem all right.  The players are looking at increasing the wall thickness from 7/16” to 9/16”.  But to achieve the ultimate goal of preventing breaching, the wall might have to be increased to say 2”.  Or you could leave the wall relatively thin, and add internal rings.  But the rings would have to be substantial, and they will add considerable weight.  Rings also require a lot of extra welding and make the car harder to clean.

[tree68]

If only the tank cars could survive the wrecks and not spill oil.  Then it wouldn't matter what the volatility was.  Of course, it would be nice not to have the wrecks in the first place.

If only the product wasn't so volatile, then it wouldn't matter if a tank car failed in a wreck, as it wouldn't be as likely to burn/explode.

As has been mentioned, this appears to be an exercise in transferring blame/responsibility.  

After all, I'm OK.  It must be you that has the problem.  Rhetorically speaking, of course.

[Norm48327]

Tank cars could be made strong enough to withstand an atomic bomb exploding ten feet above them. Problem is, they'd only hold one gallon of oil.

[Euclid]

Maybe referring to the blame game was not the best choice for the thread title.  Or maybe there is more than one blame game.  The one that I find interesting is the conclusion that tank cars cannot be made strong enough because of the newfound explosiveness of tar sands oil when diluted for transport.   

First of all it is astounding to me that it would take two train wrecks to show that diluted tar sand oil would be so volatile and explosive.  Don’t we have scientists that could have told us this ahead of time without needing a derailment to show us?

Secondly, what does the volatility of diluted tar sands oil have to do with whether tank cars can be made strong enough to survive high speed derailments without breaching?  The premise of that question is what I refer to as “childlike reasoning.”    

[Convicted One]

Euclid

The problem of exploding oil trains cannot be fixed by an extra eighth-inch of steel. The lading is exploding, not the cars.”

 

That is merely "posturing". They are trying to manipulate $liability onto other quarters.

 

Here is the meat of it. The Railroads are  the transportation experts. They are expected to possess mastery of the requirements necessary  to safely transport items they have been contracted to do so.

If the railroads believe there are other measures necessary to make the lading safe for transport, then they are certainly entitled to demand same from their customer  prior to accepting for shipment (or refuse the business).

None of these incidents that I am aware of involve lading that just spontaneously  exploded.  The transport people's "contribution" to the unexpected far outweighs any contribution at the wellhead. 

 

[BaltACD]

This is and will continue to be a urination contest between rail interests and oil interests, both pointing their fingers at each other and it will remain so until someone breaks their fingers.

The problem is that both rail and oil SHARE the responsibility for making and transporting the product safely.  Rail is attempting to improve the safety margins in the new cars (without ANY assurances that what they are doing is at least on the same line of thinking that the Regulations will ultimately require - whenever they are published).  Oil's argument that their product safe until subjected to an accident, is that of a recalcitrant two year old that cannot understand nor accept responsibility for any of their actions.  After all Big Oil still thinks ENRON was a well run business.

[Euclid]

The point I am making has nothing to do with defending Big Oil.  My point is to disagree with the logic of the point being made by the Railway Age article.  The industry started out by agreeing to make tank cars safe for transporting the volatile oil.  Now Railway Age seems to be saying that the safe tank car objective cannot be met because there is more volatile oil than we thought.    

 

[BaltACD]

Let's talk refinery explosions before we give 'big oil' a break on safety -

 

Energy industry[edit]

See also: List of pipeline accidents in the United States in the 21st century

and List of natural gas and oil production accidents in the United States

• October 1957: The Windscale fire, the worst nuclear accident in Great Britain's history, released substantial amounts of radioactive contamination into the surrounding area at Windscale, Cumberland (now Sellafield, Cumbria).
• May 1962: The Centralia, Pennsylvania coal mine fire began, forcing the gradual evacuation of the Centralia borough. The fire continues to burn in the abandoned borough.
• March 1967: The Torrey Canyon supertanker was shipwrecked off the west coast of Cornwall, England, causing an environmental disaster. This was the first major oil spill at sea.
• August, 1975: The Banqiao Dam failed in the Henan Province of China due to extraordinarily heavy rains and poor construction quality of the dam, which was built during the Great Leap Forward. The flood immediately killed over 100,000 people, and another 150,000 died of subsequent epidemic diseases and famine, bringing the total death toll to around 250,000 and making it the worst technical disaster ever.
• March 16, 1978: The Amoco Cadiz, an VLCC owned by the company Amoco (now merged with BP) sank near the northwest coast of France, resulting in the spilling of 68,684,000 US gallons of crude oil (1,635,000 barrels). This is the largest oil spill from an oil tanker in history.
• March 28, 1979: Three Mile Island accident. Partial nuclear meltdown. Mechanical failures in the non-nuclear secondary system, followed by a stuck-open pilot-operated relief valve in the primary system, allowed large amounts of reactor coolant to escape. Plant operators initially failed to recognize the loss of coolant, resulting in a partial meltdown. The reactor was brought under control but not before up to 481 PBq (13 million curies) of radioactive gases were released into the atmosphere.^[1]
• June 3, 1979: Ixtoc I oil spill. The Ixtoc I exploratory oil well suffered a blowout resulting in the third-largest oil spill and the second-largest accidental spill in history.
• November 20, 1980: A Texaco oil rig drilled into a salt mine transforming Lake Peigneur, a freshwater lake before the accident, into a saltwater lake.
• February 15, 1982: Newfoundland, Canada. The mobile offshore oil rig Ocean Ranger was struck by a rogue wave off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada and sank with the loss of all 84 crew.
• July 23, 1984: Romeoville, Illinois, Union Oil refinery explosion killed 19 people.
• November 19, 1984: San Juanico Disaster. An explosion at a liquid petroleum gas tank farm killed hundreds and injured thousands in San Juanico, Mexico.
• April 26, 1986: Chernobyl disaster. At the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Prypiat, Ukraine a test on reactor number four went out of control, resulting in a nuclear meltdown. The ensuing steam explosion and fire killed up to 50 people with estimates that there may be between 4,000 and several hundred thousand additional cancer deaths over time. Fallout could be detected as far away as Canada. The Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, covering portions of Belarus and Ukraine surrounding Prypiat, remains contaminated and mostly uninhabited. Prypiat itself was totally evacuated and remains as a ghost town.
• May 5, 1988: Norco, Louisiana, Shell Oil refinery explosion. Hydrocarbon gas escaped from a corroded pipe in a catalytic cracker and was ignited. Louisiana state police evacuated 2,800 residents from nearby neighborhoods. Seven workers were killed and 42 injured. The total cost arising from the Norco blast is estimated at US$706 million.
• July 6, 1988: Piper Alpha disaster. An explosion and resulting fire on a North Sea oil production platform killed 167 men. The total insured loss was about US$3.4 billion. To date it is rated as the world's worst offshore oil disaster in terms both of lives lost and impact to industry.
• March 24, 1989: Exxon Valdez oil spill. The Exxon Valdez, an oil tanker bound for Long Beach, California, hit Prince William Sound's Bligh Reef, dumping an estimated minimum 10.8 million US gallons (40.9 million litres, or 250,000 barrels) of crude oil into the sea. It is considered to be one of the most devastating human-caused environmental disasters ever to occur.^[2] 100,000 to as many as 250,000 seabirds died, as well as at least 2,800 sea otters, approximately 12 river otters, 300 harbor seals, 247 bald eagles, and 22 orcas, and billions of salmon and herring eggs were destroyed.^[3] Overall reductions in population have been seen in various ocean animals, including stunted growth in pink salmon populations.^[4] Sea otters and ducks also showed higher death rates in following years, partially because they ingested prey from contaminated soil and also from ingestion of oil residues on their hair/feathers due to grooming.^[5] The effects of the spill continue to be felt 20 years later.
• March 23, 2005: Texas City Refinery explosion. An explosion occurred at a BP refinery in Texas City, Texas. It is the third largest refinery in the United States and one of the largest in the world, processing 433,000 barrels of crude oil per day and accounting for three percent of that nation's gasoline supply. Over 100 were injured, and 15 were confirmed dead, including employees of Jacobs, Fluor and BP. BP has since accepted that its employees contributed to the accident. Several level indicators failed, leading to overfilling of a knockout drum, and light hydrocarbons concentrated at ground level throughout the area. A nearby running diesel truck set off the explosion.
• December 11, 2005: Hertfordshire Oil Storage Terminal fire. A series of explosions at the Buncefield oil storage depot, described as the largest peacetime explosion in Europe, devastated the terminal and many surrounding properties. There were no fatalities. Total damages have been forecast as £750 million.

• August 17, 2009: Sayano–Shushenskaya power station accident. Seventy-five people were killed at a hydroelectric power station when a turbine failed. The failed turbine had been vibrating for a considerable time. Emergency doors to stop the incoming water took a long time to close, while a self-closing lock would have stopped the water in minutes.

• February 7, 2010: 2010 Connecticut power plant explosion. A large explosion occurred at a Kleen Energy Systems 620-megawatt, Siemens combined cycle gas- and oil- fired power plant in Middletown, Connecticut, United States. Preliminary reports attributed the cause of the explosion to a test of the plant's energy systems.^[6] The plant was still under construction and scheduled to start supplying energy in June 2010.^[7] The number of injuries was eventually established to be 27. Five people died in the explosion.^[9]
• April 20, 2010: Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Eleven oil platform workers died in an explosion and fire that resulted in a massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, considered the largest offshore spill in US history.^[10]
• March 2011: Fukushima I nuclear accidents in Japan. Regarded as the largest nuclear disaster since the Chernobyl disaster, there were no direct deaths but a few of the plant's workers were severely injured or killed by the disaster conditions resulting from the earthquake.
• October 29, 2012: Hurricane Sandy caused a ConEdison power plant to explode, causing a blackout in most of midtown Manhattan. The blue light emitted from the arc made places as far as Brooklyn glow. No person was killed or injured.
• July 6, 2013: Lac-Mégantic, Quebec Canada. Lac-Mégantic derailment. Forty-seven people were killed when there was a derailment of an oil shipment train. The oil shipment caught fire and exploded, destroying more than thirty buildings. It was the fourth-deadliest rail accident in Canadian history.

Of all those listed - only 1 involved rail transportation.  Electrical generation is also included in the list.  Of course we can all retreat to cold, dark caves and walk to our destinations.  Today's life styles involve risk in creating and maintaining them.

[Euclid]

Since Lac Megantic, a blame game has developed over the problem of exploding oil trains.  The railroads and tank owners say the oil producers must make the cargo less dangerous, and the oil producers say that the railroads should prevent derailments.  Either one of the two approaches would solve the problem, but the responsibility lies in two different camps.  So there is a standoff between the railroads and the oil producers over which side should be responsible for advancing a solution. 

Now comes this article in Railway Age:

http://www.railwayage.com/index.php/blogs/david-thomas/bitumen-fireballs-expose-shortcomings-of-tank-car-tweaks.html?channel=

I think the article’s conclusions make sense through paragraph #3, culminating in this quote:

“In fact, the package of oil train reforms now under final study by the White House predicates the ordered phase-out of DOT-111 cars on their deployment to Alberta bitumen service, as newer cars become available for Bakken crude.”

But part of the general premise of the article is that the recent derailments in Ontario prove that tar sands oil is just as explosive as Bakken oil, and that this new information shifts the blame off of the shippers and onto the producers.  This part of the premise resorts to an almost childlike reasoning over the responsibility for the oil train problem.  That reasoning is summed up in these quotes from the article:

“The entire strategy underlying the proposed oil train reforms is now simply nullified by facts on the ground. The problem of exploding oil trains cannot be fixed by an extra eighth-inch of steel. The lading is exploding, not the cars.”

“An entirely fresh start on oil train safety is required, based on the knowledge that the cargo, not the cars, is the explosive factor.”

“Consequently [based on the discovery that diluted tar sands oil is just as explosive as Bakken oil], the strategy for renewal of the tank car fleet is based upon an entirely erroneous premise.”

 

Are they kidding?  Did anybody actually believe that the cars themselves were explosive?  The general premise of the article is that the newfound explosiveness of the tar sands oil (when thinned for shipping) proves that the derailments and breaching tank cars is not the problem.  That might sound reasonable in a sort of illogical way, yet it proves no such thing. 

What this article is trying to do is use the newfound explosiveness of tar sands oil, and add it to the already known explosiveness of Bakken oil-- in order to enlarge the total amount of explosive oil that will move by rail.  As the article enlarges the total of explosive oil that will move by rail, it hopes to diminish the issue of the weakness of tank cars.

The article’s conclusion that the revelation that tar sands oil is as explosive as Bakken oil certainly does NOT show that the strategy for renewal of the tank car fleet “is based on an erroneous premise.”  That is a red herring attempting to obscure the fact that the promise of adequate safety by strengthening tank cars has failed, or that it never was a promise that could be delivered in the first place.   

The strategy for renewal of the tank car fleet does indeed appear to be based on an erroneous premise, but it is has nothing to do with the volatility of the oil.  The actual erroneous premise is that the cars can be made strong enough to avoid breaching without adding so much weight to the car that it makes shipping oil by rail uneconomical.

This erroneous premise has been bought into by the widely publicised promise that the oil train safety problem will be solved by stronger tank cars.  If this erroneous premise exists today, it has existed all along and has nothing to do with the recent discovery that tar sands oil is as explosive as Bakken oil.