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Oil in Canada - Crude errors

How to make oil shipments safer

Aug 23rd 2014 | OTTAWA

FOR environmentalists, battling oil pipelines has become a surrogate for

constraining the growth of Canada s tar sands and their greenhouse-gas

emissions. Without such proposed, but stalled, pipeline projects as Northern

Gateway in Canada or Keystone XL in the United States, more tar-sands bitumen

cannot get to markets or so they thought. But railways have taken up the slack

with trains, often more than 100 wagons long, rumbling through towns across

North America.

That has brought other risks, as became tragically clear early on July 6th 2013

when a parked train of 72 tanker wagons broke free from its brakes. The train

rolled downhill for 11 kilometres (7 miles), reaching speeds of over 65mph,

before exploding in Lac-M gantic in Quebec. The resulting fire incinerated 47

people and destroyed the town s centre.

In its final report into the disaster, issued this week, Canada s

Transportation Safety Board (TSB) identified 18 failings. These included a lack

of standards, poor training and easily punctured tanks. Wendy Tadros, the board

s chairwoman, noted that regulators had failed to respond to the growth in the

movement of oil by rail. Will that now change?

The TSB calls for physical restraints, such as wheel chocks, for parked trains.

It wants Transport Canada, the regulator, to begin rigorous audits of railway

companies compliance with safety-management systems. Lisa Raitt, the transport

minister, has asked her department to consider the recommendations.

Some changes have already happened. Railway operators are now required to have

safety drills for flammable shipments and to route such trains to avoid

built-up areas where possible; where it is not, in America the companies have

agreed a 40mph speed limit.

There has been less progress in implementing a past TSB call for new and more

robust wagons for flammable liquids. In April Transport Canada proposed to give

carriers three years to match tougher standards already applied in the United

States to wagons built after October 2011. About 14,000 of those are in use in

North America, but so are 78,000 of the older tanker wagons. Most of these are

owned by leasing companies and shippers, who face costs amounting to perhaps

$35,000 per wagon for the upgrade.

There is no sign of a halt to the growth of rail shipments of oil. The Canadian

Association of Petroleum Producers estimates about 700,000 barrels a day of

crude will be shipped by rail by 2016, up from about 200,000 in late 2013.

American railways carried 434,032 wagon-loads of crude in 2013, up from 9,500

in 2008. No wonder public opinion is likely to be on the side of implementing

the TSB s recommendations in full.