New oil find in Sevier County Utah; status of proposed rail link

[mudchicken]

Most of that "new" rail line accessing the Marysvale branch from the east is going back along old railroad grade long abandoned coming in from Nephi (DRGW-San Pete Valley RR- Sevier RR- CSL). Very little would be totally new. As usual, the environmental access crap jerrymandered by several self serving interests is bogging the process down. Six County Government and their small consultant have a long way to go. Old head DRGW folks here still talk about the heartburn DRGW went through when they had to give up on the branch, the costs outweighed the benefits and could not be mitigated. (and ps- the State was offered the rail line, they refused it, but have put new road allignments over it in several places)

[Anonymous]

http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,600131526,00.html

One interesting blurb from the article states that they are trucking the 1500 barrels per day to Salt Lake area refineries. Since one barrel equals 42 gallons, that's only 63,000 gallons per day or 441,000 gallons per week, not enough to justify a shuttle train just yet. They would need roughly 5 times their current production to justify a weekly oil can move by rail. By the same token, if daily production doesn't exceed 10,000 barrels a day, that may not be enough to justify the construction of an oil pipeline into the area. Relatively small production quantities may favor unit train transport over pipeline transport.

Of course, the question is mute if the proposed Sevier rail link is not built. Does anyone know the current status of that project? The line is being proposed to move coal out of the region, but of course it wouldn't hurt to move some oil out as well.

It is unfortunate that the D&RGW chose to abandon rather than rebuild the Thistle branch which once ran into this area. This is one of those sticking points with me regarding current railroad abandonment regulations. If a railroad no longer wants to operate a rail line, then that property should immediately be transferred to the State with everything intact, rather than letting the railroad sell the rails and ties for scrap. When a property owner abandons a brick business building, he is not allowed to take the bricks with him. The local government condemns the whole lot intact, and either auctions it off to other bidders, refurbishes the building with public funds, or razes it themselves. This idea of letting railroads scavenge the remains of railroads and then just walking away is detrimental to the national economy, and is inconsistent with standard infrastructure abandonment procedures.