AP review looks at oil train spills

According to an Associated Press review of U.S. and Canadian accident records, freight trains hauling oil across North America have derailed at least 10 times since 2008, and most of the accidents touched off fires or catastrophic explosions.

The oil train derailments released nearly 3 million gallons of oil, nearly twice as much as the largest pipeline spill in the U.S. since at least 1986. The deadliest of the oil train derailments killed 47 people in the town of Lac-Megantic, Quebec.

Those findings underscore a lesser-known danger of America’s oil boom — with increasing volumes of crude now moving by rail, it’s become impossible to send oil-hauling trains to refineries without passing major population centers, where more lives and property are at risk.

Adding to the danger is the high volatility of the light, sweet crude from the Bakken oil field in Montana and North Dakota, where many of the oil trains originate. Bakken crude contains more natural gas than heavier crude and can have a lower ignition point.

Experts say the explosive nature of Bakken oil derailments caught everyone off guard — from regulators to the railroads themselves.

“I don’t think people understood the potential for a problem if there were a derailment,” said Jason Kuehn, a former railroad executive and now vice president for the industry consulting firm Oliver Wyman.

Four of the six oil trains that derailed and caught fire since 2008 came from the Bakken, and each caused at least one explosion. That includes the accident at Lac-Megantic, which spilled an estimated 1.6 million gallons and set off an explosion that leveled a large part of the town.

To deal with this danger, companies and regulators in the U.S. and Canada are looking at slowing down or rerouting trains, upgrading rupture-prone tank cars and bolstering fire departments. Company executives are expected to offer voluntary safety measures in the coming days at the request of U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx.

The number of tanker cars hauling oil has increased 40-fold since 2008, and federal records show that growth has been accompanied by a dramatic spike in accidental crude releases from tank cars.

Over the next decade, rail-based oil shipments are forecast to increase from 1 million barrels a day to more than 4.5 million barrels a day, according to transportation officials.

It’s about 2,000 miles by rail from the Bakken field to some East Coast refineries. Trains pulling several million gallons apiece must pass through metropolitan areas that include Minneapolis, Chicago, Cleveland and Buffalo.

Some cities, such as Chicago, have belt railroads that divert freight traffic from the metropolitan core. But elsewhere, railroad representatives said, the best-maintained and safest track often runs directly through communities that were built around the railroad.

Trains sometimes have no option but to travel through populated areas, such as Philadelphia, New Orleans, Albany, N.Y., and Tacoma, Wash.

A major accident in Philadelphia was narrowly avoided in January when six tanker cars carrying oil derailed on a bridge over the Schuylkill River near the heart of the city. The CSX freight train had picked up North Dakota oil in Chicago and was headed for a refinery in South Philadelphia. Nothing was spilled, but the accident rattled nerves.

Proposals to route trains away from population centers are modeled on rules adopted after the 2001 terrorist attacks to restrict cargoes even more hazardous than oil — explosives, radioactive material and poisonous gases.

When the rules were being written, California regulators pushed their federal counterparts to include oil. But Transportation Department officials said they were “not persuaded.”

Federal safety officials now say it’s time to reverse that decision, given the huge growth in tank cars carrying crude and ethanol, another flammable liquid involved in recent derailments and explosions.

The rules gave railroads broad discretion, and routing decisions are not automatically reviewed by regulators. But the Federal Railroad Administration is authorized to reject any routes found to be too risky. That has never happened since the rules took effect, said FRA Associate Administrator Kevin Thompson.

Even where trains can be re-routed through less-populous areas, critics say that simply shifts the risk to smaller communities with fewer resources to handle a fiery accident. Rural and suburban municipalities in Maine, Illinois and Vermont already have pushed back against the proposal.