Protect Community Safety:
No single person train crews

Aliceville Alabama 11/14/13

 

Dear

​Community Activist​

,

We have until May 16th to tell the Federal Railroad Administration under no circumstances is it safe to run trains through our communities with fewer than two crew members.

On March 15th, the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) announced a Proposed Rule on the whole question of crew staffing for trains in the United States. After careful consideration, Railroad Workers United has come to the only conclusion possible: The Proposed Rule provided a road map for any and all rail carriers to obtain the FRA's blessing to run trains with a single employee, even on hazardous materials oil trains. Therefore, RWU cannot support this Proposed Rule, period. This letter to the FRA is Railroad Workers United response to the proposed notice of rule making. 

We continue to agree with the joint statement from nearly 7 years ago that the BLET and UTU unions made in a joint Petition filed in June 2009 with the FRA on the question which reads: "No conditions exist where one-person operations are safe."  And since the Proposed Rule is predicated on the "safe" operation of trains with a single crew member, we urge the FRA to promulgate a rule that outlaws the practice.

We urge all RWU members, railroad workers, and community allies to contact the FRA and tell them in plain language: "No single employee train crews!" 

  

Sincerely,

Ross Grooters

Steering Committee Co-Chair

Railroad Workers United

railroadworkersunited@gmail.com
202-798-3327

From the Michigan News...

One oil field a key culprit in global ethane gas increase

• Apr 26, 2016
• Contact Nicole Casal Moore, 734-647-7087, ncmoore@umich.edu or Katy Human, 303-735-0196, kathleen.human@colorado.edu

A snapshot from a simulation of how Bakken oil field hydrocarbon emissions including ethane affect North American ground-level ozone concentrations. Hydrocarbons react with nitrogen oxides (NOx) and sunlight to produce ozone. Ground-level ozone leads to poor air quality. This snapshot represents one hour during the summer of 2014 in an air quality model. The reddish hues directly over and downwind of the Bakken show that emissions there accounted for increases of up to 4 ozone molecules per billion air molecules, about 6 percent of the present EPA standard. The colors don't indicate that any particular location necessarily experienced an unhealthy air day, but they do show where Bakken emissions had the greatest impacts. Credit: Lee Murray, NASA GISS/Columbia University

ANN ARBOR—A single U.S. shale oil field is responsible for much of the past decade's increase in global atmospheric levels of ethane, a gas that can damage air quality and impact climate, according to new study led by the University of Michigan.
The researchers found that the Bakken Formation, an oil and gas field in North Dakota and Montana, is emitting roughly 2 percent of the globe's ethane. That's about 250,000 tons per year.
"Two percent might not sound like a lot, but the emissions we observed in this single region are 10 to 100 times larger than reported in inventories. They directly impact air quality across North America. And they're sufficient to explain much of the global shift in ethane concentrations," said Eric Kort, U-M assistant professor of climate and space sciences and engineering, and first author of the study published in Geophysical Research Letters.
Researchers flew over the Bakken oil field in North Dakota and Montana to gather data about emissions of ethane, a hydrocarbon gas that can damage air quality and impact climate. This is the view from their NOAA Twin Otter aircraft. Credit: Eric KortThe Bakken is part of a 200,000-square-mile basin that underlies parts of Saskatchewan and Manitoba in addition to the two U.S. states. It saw a steep increase in oil and gas activity over the past decade, powered by advances in hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, and horizontal drilling.
Between 2005 and 2014, the Bakken's oil production jumped by a factor of 3,500, and its gas production by 180. In the past two years, however, production has plateaued.
Ethane is the second most abundant atmospheric hydrocarbon, a family of compounds made of hydrogen and carbon. Ethane reacts with sunlight and other molecules in the atmosphere to form ozone, which at the surface can cause respiratory problems, eye irritation and other ailments and damage crops.
Surface-level ozone is one of the main pollutants that the national Air Quality Index measures in its effort to let the public know when breathing outside for long periods of time could be harmful. Low-altitude ozone also plays a role in climate change, as it is a greenhouse gas and the third-largest contributor to human-caused global warming after carbon dioxide and methane.Globally, the atmosphere's ethane levels were on the downswing from 1984 to 2009. The gas gets into the air primarily through leaks in fossil fuel extraction, processing and distribution. Scientists attributed its declining levels to less venting and flaring of gas from oil fields and less leakage from production and distribution systems.
But in 2010, a mountaintop sensor in Europe registered an ethane uptick. Researchers looked into it. They hypothesized that the boom in U.S. oil and gas brought about by hydraulic fracturing could be the culprit—even a continent away. Ethane concentrations have been increasing ever since.
To gather their data, the researchers flew over the Bakken Formation in a NOAA Twin Otter aircraft, sampling air for 12 days in May 2014. Their airborne measurements from directly over and downwind of oil production areas show that the field's ethane emissions of 0.23 teragrams per year, or roughly 250,000 U.S. tons, effectively cancel out half of the global decline rate.
"These findings not only solve an atmospheric mystery—where that extra ethane was coming from—they also help us understand how regional activities sometimes have global impacts," said co-author Colm Sweeney, a scientist with the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder, and NOAA. "We did not expect a single oil field to affect global levels of this gas."
Ethane emissions from other U.S. fields, especially the Eagle Ford in Texas, likely contributed as well, the research team says. The findings illustrate the key role of shale oil and gas production in rising ethane levels.
The study is titled "Fugitive emissions from the Bakken shale illustrate role of shale production in global ethane shift." Also contributing were researchers from NOAA, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, Columbia University, Stanford University and Harvard University. The research was funded primarily by NOAA and NASA.

More information:

• Study: Fugitive emissions from the Bakken shale illustrate role of shale production in global ethane shift
• Eric Kort

The New Oil-Storage Space: Railcars

The New Oil-Storage Space: Railcars

By Nicole Friedman and Bob Tita

Updated Feb. 28, 2016 9:09 p.m. ET

The U.S. is so awash in crude oil that traders are experimenting with new places to store it: empty railcars.

Thousands of railcars ordered up to transport oil are now sitting idle because current ultralow crude prices have made shipping by train unprofitable. Meanwhile, traditional storage tanks are running out of room as U.S. oil inventories swell to their highest level since the 1930s. 

Some industry participants are calling the new practice “rolling storage”—a landlocked spin on the “floating storage” producers use to hold crude on giant oil tankers when inventories run high.

The combination of cheap oil and surplus railcars has created a budding new side business for traders. J.P. Fjeld-Hansen, a managing director for trading company Musket Corp., tested using railcars for storage last year and found he could profit by putting the oil aside while locking in a higher price to deliver it in a later month.

The company built a rail terminal in Windsor, Colo., in 2012 to load oil shipments during a boom in U.S. oil production. Now, Mr. Fjeld-Hansen says, “The focus has shifted from a loading terminal to an oil-storage and railcar-storage business.”

Energy Midstream, a trading company based in The Woodlands, Texas, stored an ultralight oil known as condensate on Ohio railcars last month for about 15 days before shipping it to a buyer in Canada.

Dennis Hoskins, a managing partner at Energy Midstream, says there are so many unused tank cars that he is constantly hearing from railcar owners hoping to put them to use. “We get offers everyday for railcars,” he said.

The use of railcars for storage could be limited by the cost of track space and safety and liability concerns that have followed a string of high-profile transport accidents. Issues range from leaky cars to the risk of collisions and fires.

Federal regulations require railroads that store cars loaded with hazardous materials like oil to comply with strict storage and security measures to keep the cars away from daily rail traffic. Railroads and users face responsibility for leaks, collisions or other mishaps.

“I don’t want the liability,” said Judy Petry, president of Oklahoma rail operator Farmrail System Inc. “We prefer not to hold a loaded car.”

Still, the oil has to go somewhere. The surge in shale-oil production has created a massive glut that the industry is struggling to absorb. BP PLC Chief Executive Bob Dudley joked in a speech this month that by midyear, “every storage tank and swimming pool in the world will be filled with oil.”

Khory Ramage, president of Ironhorse Permian Basin LLC, which operates a rail terminal in Artesia, N.M., said he hears regularly from traders looking to store crude in his railcars.

Crude-storage costs “have been accelerating, just due to the demand for it and less room,” he said. “You’ll probably start seeing this kick up more and more.”

U.S. crude inventories rose above 500 million barrels in late January for the first time since 1930, according to the Energy Information Administration.

The cheapest form of storage—underground salt caverns—can cost 25 cents a barrel each month, while storing crude on railcars costs about 50 cents a barrel and floating storage can cost 75 cents or more. The cost estimates don’t include loading and transportation.

Railcars hold between 500 and 700 barrels of oil, less than a cavern, tank or ship can store.

The use of U.S. railcars to transport large volumes of oil picked up steam a few years ago as a byproduct of the fracking boom. Fields sprung up faster than pipelines could be laid, so producers improvised and shipped their output to market by rail. Companies soon realized railroads offered greater flexibility to transfer oil to whomever offered the best price. Some pipeline companies even joined the rail business, building terminals to load and unload oil. U.S. oil settled Friday at $32.78 a barrel, down nearly 70% from mid-2014. 

The plunge in oil prices brought that activity to a halt. Analysts estimate there are now as many as 20,000 tank cars—about one-third of the North American fleet for hauling oil—parked out of the way in storage yards or along unused stretches of tracks in rural areas.

Producers and shippers who signed long-term leases for the cars during the boom are stuck paying monthly rates that typically run $1,500 to $1,700 per car. Traders can pay those prices and still profit. Oil bought at the April price and sold through the futures market for delivery a year later could net a trader $8.07 a barrel, not including storage or transportation costs.

As central storage hubs fill up, oil companies are more willing to pay for expensive and remote types of storage, said Ernie Barsamian, principal of the Tank Tiger, which keeps a database of companies looking to buy and sell oil storage space.

The Tank Tiger posted an inquiry Wednesday on behalf of a client seeking 75,000 barrels of crude-oil storage or space to park 100 to 120 railcars loaded with crude.

Mr. Barsamian likened the disappearance of available storage to a coloring book where nearly all the white space has been filled in.

“You’re getting closer to the edges,” he said.

Write to Nicole Friedman at nicole.friedman@wsj.com and Bob Tita at robert.tita@wsj.com