A series of dramatic accidents has brought attention to the hazards of shipping crude oil by rail. Wednesday the federal Department of Transportation proposed new rules for the industry. Wyoming Public Radio’s Stephanie Joyce reports for Inside Energy.
Since the derailment of a crude oil train in Lac Megantic, Quebec last year that leveled that town and killed 47 people, there’s been a lot of talk about the safety of shipping crude oil by rail. But Eric de Place, director policy for the Sightline Institute, says the conversation has gone something like this…
“We have oil refiners, oil shippers, oil extractors and the railroad industry all shifting the blame from one to another and the regulators not doing much at all.”
Regulators are trying to change that. In new draft rules, they make a number of recommendations, including phasing out a type of tank car called DOT-111s over the next two years. Despite being the most common way to ship oil by rail, 111s are thin-walled and often rip open in derailments. The rules also propose testing crude oil for flammability, enforcing speed limits for oil trains, and routing those trains around population centers. But de Place says they’re not specific enough to be meaningful.
“I would say the one group who doesn’t have its lobbying fingerprints on it is the public.”
Others also say the rules are too broad, but for different reasons. Anthony Hatch is a rail consultant. He says the government is trying to solve a problem that it doesn’t understand.
“When something unusual happens, they do unusual things, and those unusual things aren’t always helpful, they’re often so they can be perceived as ‘doing something.’ That should be a cold comfort.”
Hatch says while switching out the DOT-111s is something that should probably happen, he’s not sure that’s the biggest issue. He says it may be more important to strip volatile gases out of the oil -- something that's not mentioned in the rule at all.
The DOT is taking public comment for the next 60 days.
