Hundreds of thousands of tank car loads of crude oil snake across the nation each year. The number has increased 14-fold in the last five years… and along with that, there’s been an increased number of accidents, derailments and spills. Public safety advocates are clamoring for more information about where the trains are going and how much crude they’re carrying… but it’s been almost impossible to come by. Regulators don’t collect it and the railroads have refused to disclose it. Why all the secrecy? Wyoming Public Radio’s Stephanie Joyce reports for Inside Energy.
Ask the West’s two biggest railroads -- BNSF and Union Pacific -- why they won’t share information about how much crude oil is being shipped and where it’s going, and you’ll likely get this answer.
“We don’t disclose that to the public for safety and security reasons.”
That’s BNSF spokeswoman Courtney Wallace. Specifically, the company cites a handful of federal regulations designed to protect so-called “sensitive security information.” That category that lies somewhere between classified and public, and disclosing it to people not considered “need to know” is prohibited.
“We will provide that to first responders, emergency planners, so that they understand what, historically, has been going through their communities.”
But the thing is… according to the federal agency that regulates the railroads, data about crude trains isn’t sensitive security information. This month, the Federal Railroad Administration’s spokesman told the Associated Press that his agency has no problem with the railroads releasing the data to the public.
Some state-level regulators disagree, like Wyoming’s Director of Homeland Security, Guy Cameron. The federal government recently ordered the railroads to share information with states about trains carrying over a million gallons of crude from the Bakken oil fields of North Dakota. Cameron said in an interview earlier this month that sharing that data with the public would pose a security risk, and that he would deny public records requests for it.
“Should there be a sense of concern for a terroristic act, the law gives us the appropriate and lawful ability to deny a request, based on that concern.”
Cameron couldn’t say why crude trains would be more vulnerable than pipelines or refineries, which are publicly disclosed. But security isn’t the only reason the railroads say they need to keep the data confidential. They also argue it would hurt their business. How? It’s unclear. When asked repeatedly to elaborate, both BNSF and Union Pacific either refused or ignored the question.
“I’ve been studying crude by rail for years now, and I don’t know of any very compelling reason why the information about the movement of these products would put the railroads at a competitive disadvantage.”
That’s Eric de Place, policy director for the Sightline Institute, an environmental think-tank based in Seattle.
“It’s hard to see how you could be at a competitive disadvantage when you have effectively monopolistic control over an entire state’s rail industry.”
De Place is referring to BNSF in North Dakota. According data analysis by Inside Energy, four out of every five railcars of crude oil shipped in the United States last year originated on BNSF, and most of that came from North Dakota. But de Place says it’s possible the railroads aren’t worried about their competitors so much as the information being released to their investors. He says the railroads are all underinsured for a worst-case scenario oil train derailment, for example, in the middle of downtown Minneapolis or Missoula…
“I guess it’s a competitiveness issue in the sense that they are running this low probability but not zero risk that something awful is going to happen and they’re either going to be driven out of business or taxpayers are going to have to step in to prevent them from failing.”
But de Place says it’s actually probably much more straightforward -- that the railroads aren’t sharing because no one is making them. Charlie Banks agrees. He’s an independent railroad consultant based in Virginia.
“They’ve gotten really good at resisting and quote on quote, “putting down,” calls for anything they sniff out as potentially leading to more regulation.”
Banks doesn’t actually want data about train movements and volumes released -- he thinks the security concerns are legitimate -- but he says anyone who does is facing an uphill battle because of the railroads’ powerful lobbyists in Washington, D.C.
But grassroots momentum appears to be building for public disclosure. Not only that, some states are starting to disclose data about big shipments of Bakken crude oil. Montana has said it will release that information next week, and unless the railroads intervene with a lawsuit, Washington is planning to do the same.
