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Feds Issue Emergency Order On Crude Oil Trains
Hugh Pickens DOT Com (2995471) writes "Joan Lowy writes for AP that the Department of Transportation has issued an emergency order requiring that railroads inform state emergency management officials about the movement of large shipments of crude oil through their states and urged shippers not to use older model tanks cars that are easily ruptured in accidents, even at slow speeds. The emergency order follows a warning two weeks ago from outgoing National Transportation Safety Board Chairwoman Deborah Hersman that the department risks a 'higher body count' as the result of fiery oil train accidents if it waits for new safety regulations to become final. There have been nine oil train derailments in the U.S. and Canada since March of last year, many of them resulting in intense fires and sometimes the evacuation of nearby residents, according to the NTSB. The latest was last week, when a CSX train carrying Bakken crude derailed in downtown Lynchburg, Va., sending three tank cars into the James River and shooting flames and black smoke into the air. Concern about the safe transport of crude oil was heightened after a runaway oil train derailed and then exploded last July in the small town of Lac-Megantic in Canada, just across the border from Maine. More than 60 tank cars spilled more than 1.3 million gallons of oil. Forty-seven people were killed and 30 buildings destroyed in the resulting inferno. Hersman says that over her 10 years on the board she has 'seen a lot of difficulty when it comes to safely rules being implemented if we don't have a high enough body count. That is a tombstone mentality. We know the steps that will prevent or mitigate these accidents. What is missing is the will to require people to do so.'"
Yeah, we've obviously never had major pipeline spills.
I just hope you call before you dig... The biggest single cause of pipeline releases is 3rd party excavation damage:
http://primis.phmsa.dot.gov/co...
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
http://www.manhattan-institute...
Plenty of studies done... According to this one rail is about 4x more likely to have an incident per weight-mile. Which is still ahead of the 40x more likely when transported by road!
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
You know, a PIPELINE would be a lot safer way of transporting crude oil around the country... Stopping the construction of pipelines results in more of these rail car accidents you know.
Right. The problem is that President 1%'s buddy Warren Buffett owns a railroad, not a pipeline.
Do the math.
Do you have ESP?
A new pipeline is an amazing feat of engineering. Old pipelines were just whatever pipe they could find laid in the ground.
All the engineering in the world means dick if you never inspect it and actively lobby against mandatory spill detection technologies because they make pipelines more expensive.
To make an obligatory Slashdot car analogy: I am suggesting we make new planes so people will be able to travel safer than driving a car. You come back with "yeah, we've obviously never had major plane crashes".
Airplanes have been having a lot more problems since the airlines started off-shoring maintenance.
It's been an ongoing problem for ~10 years now.
It's no surprise that the cheaper route is not the safer route when it comes to planes and pipelines.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!