Chattanooga Times Free Press
Friday 3 July 2015
Officials lift evacuation after Tennessee train derailment
by Steve Megargee & Johnny Clark of The Associated Press (AP writers Adrian Sainz in Memphis, TN and Rebecca Yonker in Louisville, KY contributed to this report)
MARYVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Thousands of eastern Tennessee residents were returning home Friday after they were evacuated when a CSX train car carrying hazardous material derailed and caught fire.
An evacuation order has been lifted for about 5,000 people who live within a mile-and-a-half radius of the crash site, Maryville City Manager Greg McClain said during a Friday news conference. Most of those evacuated received urgent knocks at their doors between midnight and 6 a.m. Thursday by emergency workers who told them they should leave immediately.
The concern stemmed from the contents of the car that derailed: liquid acrylonitrile, a hazardous material used in multiple industrial processes including making plastics. It’s flammable and it’s dangerous if inhaled. The EPA says some effects of breathing acrylonitrile include headaches, dizziness, irritability and rapid heartbeat.
Officials said tests to monitor air quality have shown no danger to residents.
“It is safe to go home”, McClain said.
Eighty-seven people were treated at Blount Memorial Hospital in Maryville, and 36 were admitted, hospital spokesman Josh West said. None had life-threatening injuries, but they were experiencing respiratory issues, skin irritation and nausea, West said.
One person was discharged early Friday, and the number of patients being released from the hospital was expected to increase throughout the day, West said.
Ten first responders were treated at the hospital after breathing fumes.
CSX has offered to reimburse people for expenses stemming from the sudden evacuation. Some evacuated residents were pleasantly surprised by hotel vouchers and an abundance of food and free ice cream.
CSX opened an outreach center for displaced residents. On Friday, most people at the shelter facility were getting food and water and filling out reimbursement forms.
Elizabeth Whitehead, 32, said she stayed with friends because she didn’t find out about the hotel vouchers in time.
“It’s exhausting,” Whitehead said Friday. “We haven’t had showers … It kind of makes you feel a little displaced.”
Smoke had stopped rising from the site by 6 p.m. Thursday, Blount County Mayor Ed Mitchell said. Firefighters spent the day hosing down neighboring rail cars to keep them cool while also trying to move them away from the flames. A byproduct of burning acrylonitrile is cyanide, and there were concerns that some would be contained in the fumes, Mitchell said.
Officials asked residents near the derailment site not to drink well water until they are told they can; officials said there was no indication yet whether well water was affected by the accident. CSX was providing bottled water to residents at a local middle school.
Kevin Eichinger, an on-scene coordinator with the E.P.A., said air, water and soil samples were tested. McClain said air samples have been “very, very favorable,” and Eichinger said the hazardous product did not appear to make it into a nearby creek.
The [CSX] train was traveling from Cincinnati to Waycross, Georgia. It had 57 cars and two locomotives, and 27 cars carried hazardous chemicals: nine with acrylonitrile, 16 with propane and two with asphalt, said Craig Camuso, CSX regional vice president for state government affairs. He said the cause of the derailment was not yet known.
CSX said Friday that all but two cars involved in the derailment had been removed from the crash scene; one remaining car was the one that derailed, and the other car contained the hazardous chemical but was not breached in the crash.
The Federal Railroad Administration said it had investigators and hazmat inspectors at the scene and would investigate the cause once it was safe to do so.
The National Transportation Safety Board is not investigating the accident, but will monitor it and could send an investigator later, NTSB spokesman Terry Williams said in an email.
In general, the transportation of hazardous materials in commerce is regulated by federal law, which requires that hazmat shippers be registered, the material be properly classified, the handlers have preliminary hazmat training, and that the material be labeled and held in proper containers, Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration spokesman Gordon 'Joe' Delcambre Jr. said in an email.
He said [that] more than 1 million daily shipments of hazardous materials are moved across the nation by all modes of transportation.
FOLLOW-UP Saturday July 4th: The evacuation order was lifted for about 5,000 people living within 1½ miles of the derailment site, as 'tests to monitor air quality have shown no danger to residents'. Eighty-seven people were treated at Blount Memorial Hospital in Maryville, and 36 people experiencing non-life-threatening respiratory issues, skin irritation, and nausea were admitted.
FOLLOW-UP Monday July 6th: Officials were finding dead fish in Culton Creek, so they warned citizens to avoid the waterway and to have any nearby well water tested before drinking it.
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The Times-Picayune newspaper of New Orleans
Thursday 16 April 2015
by The Associated PressCollapsed Gulf oil platform has been leaking since 2004, investigation finds
OVER THE GULF OF MEXICO mdash; A blanket of fog lifts, exposing a band of rainbow sheen that stretches for miles off the coast of Louisiana. From the vantage point of an airplane, it's easy to see gas bubbles in the slick that mark the spot where an oil platform toppled during a 2004 hurricane, triggering what might be the longest-running commercial oil spill ever to pollute the Gulf of Mexico.
Yet more than a decade after crude started leaking at the site formerly operated by Taylor Energy Company, few people even know of its existence. The company has downplayed the leak's extent and environmental impact, likening it to scores of minor spills and natural seeps the Gulf routinely absorbs.
An Associated Press investigation has revealed evidence that the spill is far worse than what Taylor – or the government – have publicly reported during their secretive, and costly, effort to halt the leak. Presented with AP's findings, that the sheen recently averaged about 91 gallons of oil per day across eight square miles, the Coast Guard provided a new leak estimate that is about 20 times greater than one recently touted by the company.
Outside experts say the spill could be even worse – possibly one of the largest ever in the Gulf.
Taylor's oil was befouling the Gulf for years in obscurity before BP's massive spill in mile-deep water outraged the nation in 2010. Even industry experts haven't heard of Taylor's slow-motion spill, which has been leaking like a steady trickle from a faucet, compared to the fire hose that was BP's gusher.
Taylor, a company renowned in Louisiana for the philanthropy of its deceased founder, has kept documents secret that would shed light on what it has done to stop the leak and eliminate the persistent sheen.
The Coast Guard said in 2008 [that] the leak posed a 'significant threat' to the environment, though there is no evidence [that] oil from the site has reached shore. Ian MacDonald, a Florida State University biological oceanography professor and expert witness in a lawsuit against Taylor, said the sheen "presents a substantial threat to the environment" and is capable of harming birds, fish and other marine life.
Using satellite images and pollution reports, the watchdog group SkyTruth {based in West Virginia} estimates between 300,000 and 1.4 million gallons of oil has spilled from the site since 2004, with an annual average daily leak rate between 37 and 900 gallons.
If SkyTruth's high-end estimate of 1.4 million gallons is accurate, Taylor's spill would be about 1 percent the size of BP's, which a judge ruled amounted to 134 million gallons. That would still make the Taylor spill the 8th largest in the Gulf since 1970, according to a list compiled by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
"The Taylor leak is just a great example of what I call a dirty little secret in plain sight," said SkyTruth President John Amos.
Taylor has spent tens of millions of dollars to contain and stop its leak, but it says nothing can be done to completely halt the chronic slicks.
The New Orleans-based company presented federal regulators last year with a proposed "final resolution" at the site, but the details remain under wraps. For years, the government has allowed the company to shield other spill-related information from public scrutiny – all in the name of protecting trade secrets.
Industry experts and environmental advocates are baffled by Taylor's inability to stop the leak and [by] its demands for confidentiality.
"It's not normal to have a spill like this," said Ken Arnold, an industry consultant and former engineering manager for Shell Oil Company. "The whole thing surprises me. Normally, we fix things much more quickly than this."
Five years ago, it took 87 days for BP to cap its blown-out Gulf well and halt the worst offshore oil spill in the nation's history. The disaster, which killed 11 rig workers, exposed weaknesses in the industry's safety culture and gaps in its spill response capabilities.
Taylor's leak provided earlier evidence of how difficult it can be for the industry to prevent or stop a spill in an unforgiving environment. But the company has balked at sharing information that could help other offshore operators prepare for a similar incident, saying it's a valuable asset.
Whether it can profit from any industry innovations is debatable. The company sold all its offshore leases and oil and gas interests in 2008, four years after founder Patrick Taylor died.
Down to just one full-time employee, Taylor Energy exists only to continue fighting a spill that has no end in sight.
LEARNING CURVE
Hurricane Ivan whipped into the Gulf of Mexico in 2004, churning up waves that triggered an underwater mudslide and toppled Taylor's platform. The rig stood roughly 10 miles off Louisiana's coast in approximately 475 feet of water, and buried its cluster of 28 wells under mounds of sediment. Taylor tried to remove the unstable sediment covering the damaged wells, but determined it was too dangerous for divers.
Without access to the buried wells, traditional 'plug and abandon' efforts wouldn't work.
In 2005, hurricanes Katrina and Rita disrupted the company's response efforts for several months. In 2007, slick sightings became more frequent near the wreckage. In 2008, the Coast Guard, concerned about the environmental threat of the leak, ordered additional work, including daily monitoring flights over the site.
Just as BP had to improvise a method for capping its well in mile-deep water, Taylor says it formulated an "unprecedented plan" for containing the leak and sealing its buried wells.
Only the broad outlines of the company's efforts are publicly known. A contractor designed a device to capture and dispose of oil and gas flowing from the seabed where its wells are buried.
Another contractor drilled new wells to intercept and plug nine wells deemed capable of leaking oil.
A year ago, federal officials convened a workshop on the leak. Months later, the company presented regulators its proposal for a final resolution at the site. That plan remains confidential, but Taylor Energy President William Pecue has said experts and government officials agree that the "best course of action . . . is to not take any affirmative action" due to the possible risks of additional drilling.
Taylor had to share confidential records with the Waterkeeper Alliance, a New York City-based environmental group that sued the company in 2012 over its secrecy. But the company has aggressively worked to keep them from the public, stamping thousands of pages of documents as confidential and heavily redacting its president's deposition.
A report related to the March 2014 workshop is under seal, with the company arguing in a court filing that releasing it would undermine the government's decision-making process. And a court order prohibits the Waterkeeper Alliance from disseminating any of the confidential records.
During his deposition for the lawsuit, Pecue said the company developed innovations of "huge value" to another company in a similar situation.
"Much of what we spent was because there was no pre-existing way to address this type of event in the history of our industry," he said.
Long before Taylor's leak, the industry learned of the risks of drilling in the Gulf's mudslide-prone areas. In 1969, Hurricane Camille caused a mudslide that destroyed a platform and damaged another.
Taylor's platform had been installed in 1984 by Sohio Petroleum, which started drilling wells before the company was acquired by BP. Taylor purchased the platform from BP in 1994 and drilled additional wells.
Pecue, the company's last remaining full-time employee, said Taylor didn't do anything to assess the risk of mudslides at its platform besides verifying that the previous leaseholder's permits and designs met regulatory requirements.
Soon after Taylor's platform toppled, a company contractor hired Louisiana State University professor Harry Roberts to perform a geological analysis of the site. Roberts said it had appeared to have been "reasonably stable" before Ivan struck.
"But it turned out not to be," he added. "It is a learning curve. Maybe this is a point on the learning curve that other companies can learn from."
SUDDEN SPIKE
Even people whose job it is to know about such leaks didn't know about this one. Plaquemines Parish coastal restoration director P.J. Hahn only found out about it in December 2012 when he spotted one of Taylor's slicks during a flight to BP's Deepwater Horizon site. Hahn was stunned when a Coast Guard official informed him oil had been leaking there for years.
"That's right off of our coast. It's really close," said Hahn, who started in the job in 2007 and left the parish government last year. "I would have thought somebody would have shared it with us."
From his home office in Shepherdstown, West Virginia, Sky Truth's Amos was tracking BP's oil with satellites when he too was shocked to discover Taylor's slicks.
He began tracking the Taylor spill, eventually estimating its size at between 300,000 and 1.4 million gallons.
The government, based on company-generated pollution reports, has given much smaller leak estimates for Taylor, from an average of 22 gallons per day in 2008 down to an average of 12 gallons per day over roughly the next five years. In a recent court filing, Taylor said experts concluded in March 2014 that the sheens contained an average volume of less than 4 gallons per day.
But AP's review of more than 2,300 pollution reports since 2008 found they didn't match official accounts of a diminishing leak. In fact, the reports show a dramatic spike in sheen sizes and oil volumes since Sept. 1, 2014. That came just after federal regulators held a workshop to improve the accuracy of Taylor's slick estimates and started sending government observers on the contractor's daily flights over the site.
From April 2008 through August 2014, the average sheen size reported to the Coast Guard was 2 square miles with an average volume of 11 gallons of oil, according to AP's analysis. Since then, the daily average sheen size ballooned to 8 square miles with an average volume of 91 gallons.
When confronted by AP with evidence of the spike, the Coast Guard attributed it to an improved method for estimating the slicks from the air – with the clear implication that far more oil had been spilling for years than had been reported.
After initially providing AP with an outdated, lower estimate, the Coast Guard then disclosed a new estimate – that approximately 16,000 gallons of oil have been spotted in slicks over the past seven months. That is roughly six times higher than its 2013 estimate, of about 4,500 gallons a year, and 20 times higher than the figure cited by Taylor in a Feb. 19 court filing.
The company hasn't disclosed the much larger leak estimate in any publicly accessible court filings.
In many reports over the years, there are glaring inconsistencies between the estimated size of the sheen and the corresponding volume calculation. One example: The longest sheen reported was 1,170 square miles in October 2009, but the report estimated the slick contained only 1.58 gallons of oil. Even if this slick covered just 1 percent of the stated area, a simple calculation shows it would be stretched to seven billionths of an inch thick – far too thin for the eye to see. Hundreds of other reports are similarly questionable.
While Taylor insists it has acted "responsibly" throughout its spill response, the pattern of dubious pollution reports makes it difficult to assess the company's reports of progress in controlling the leak.
The response to Taylor's leak also reinforces how the government, lacking the industry's expertise and resources, often must rely on companies and their contractors to assess and contain offshore spills. A presidential commission that investigated BP's spill identified that as a weakness.
A Taylor spokesman declined to comment on AP's findings, but the company's lawyers have dismissed the Waterkeeper Alliance's lawsuit as a "sham" that shouldn't tarnish Patrick Taylor's legacy. Taylor, who died less than two months after Hurricane Ivan, is renowned in Louisiana for championing a program that has provided free state-paid college tuition to thousands of students. His family foundation, led by his widow, still donates millions of dollars annually to charity.
The company says oil released from the site now comes from the sediment around the wells, not the wells themselves; the Coast Guard statement says the source of the slicks is unknown.
Taking into account the reported change in estimation methods, AP's analysis doesn't show any statistically valid drop in sheen sizes or oil amounts over time. Sky Truth's Amos said the slick sizes should be steadily shrinking if the wells really are sealed and the recent sheens are residual oil oozing from the sediment.
"The persistent size of the oil slicks we're seeing just don't jibe with those low leak-rate estimates we've seen from those officials," he said.
A PERFECT LAB
Amos isn't the only skeptic. MacDonald, the Florida State University professor who is an expert witness for the Waterkeeper Alliance, leads a team of researchers tracking the sheen with satellite imagery, aerial photography, and samples from the water.
MacDonald didn't respond to an interview request. But in a court filing he said he suspects [that] the company has used outdated mathematical formulas. His "conservative" estimate is that Taylor's reports lowball the amount of oil leaking by, on average, "a factor of 100 or more".
Gaps and complex variables in the data make it impossible to pinpoint how much oil has actually spilled. Doug Helton, operations coordinator for NOAA's Emergency Response Division, said estimating the volume of slicks is hindered by the difficulty of determining the thickness of the oil.
"It's hard to do that from satellites. It's hard to do that from flying by in an aircraft," Helton said.
Oil slicks from both natural and man-made sources are common in the Gulf of Mexico. Every year, millions of gallons of crude seep naturally from cracks in the seabed. Massive spills like BP's are rare, but offshore accidents often pollute the Gulf with smaller quantities of oil.
The Interior Department also says small leaks have been detected from abandoned wells that may have been unsuccessfully sealed by the companies that drilled them. A 2010 AP investigation revealed [that] federal regulators weren't routinely inspecting more than 27,000 abandoned wells in the Gulf.
The persistent and predictable nature of the Taylor's slicks has given MacDonald and fellow Florida State researcher Oscar Garcia-Pineda a perfect laboratory for their work.
"Since it's there, I guess we have to take advantage of it," said Garcia-Pineda, who is studying oil emulsions on satellite images.
Garcia-Pineda has visited the site several times since August 2011, by boat and plane. Fumes sickened him and another researcher during a boat trip to the site, even though they were wearing respirators.
Last month, Garcia-Pineda flew over the site to shoot photographs and video of the sheen shortly after a satellite captured images of the slick. Pointing his camera out the passenger window of a four-seat Cessna, Garcia-Pineda marveled at the slick stretching for several miles.
"It's just amazing how much oil is there," he said.
Associated Press 4/2015 video report [2:28] at YouTube
PARALLEL STORY
April 2015: Capitol Hill lawmakers from Louisiana have intervened on behalf of Taylor Energy Company, which has failed to stop a decade-old oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico. The company lobbied for a refund of money reserved for spill containment work, according to letters obtained by The Associated Press through public records requests.
Since December 2014, at least four members of Louisiana's congressional delegation have urged the Obama administration to take up a settlement proposal by Taylor Energy Company, the letters show. The company is down to one full-time employee and is no longer active in the offshore drilling industry, but its deceased CEO was a prominent philanthropist and generous political donor, whose family foundation is quite active in maintaining that reputation.
UPDATE October 2018
The U.S. Coast Guard on October 23 ordered Taylor Energy Company to do something about its damaged oil platform that for the last 14 years has been leaking thousands of gallons of crude oil per day into the Gulf of Mexico. Taylor has plugged nine of the 28 wells at the platform, but argues that because the wells are buried under 100 feet of mud, they can't be the cause of the oil spill. A Justice Department analysis found that from 10,500 to 29,000 gallons of oil a day has leaked into the Gulf from Taylor's abandoned oil platform since 2004; previously, the government used reports by contractors hired by Taylor Energy, which claimed that anywhere from 42 to 2,300 gallons leaked per day. The Coast Guard's order calls for Taylor Energy to "institute a ... system to capture, contain, and remove oil" from the site or pay a daily $40,000 fine for failing to comply.
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Bloomberg News
Saturday 7 March 2015
by Thomas Black, Lynn Doan & Devin BanerjeeDerailed B.N.S.F. Train Still Burning as Second Crash Catches Fire
A Canadian National Railway Co. train carrying crude oil derailed and caught fire in northern Ontario, while a BNSF Railway Co. train carrying Bakken oil for Mercuria Energy Group Ltd. continued to burn in rural Illinois two days after it jumped the tracks.
Canadian National said on its website that the train derailed around 2:46 a.m. Saturday near Gogama, about 373 miles (600 kilometers) north of Toronto, with no injuries reported. Meanwhile, five of the BNSF train’s 105 cars remained on fire after Thursday’s derailment.
Several accidents, fires and explosions related to Bakken oil carried in rail cars over the past two years have spurred calls for tougher regulations. North Dakota required all operators to condition the crude to a lower vapor pressure beginning in April. A fiery oil-by-rail crash in Quebec killed 47 people in 2013, and last month a CSX Corp. train carrying Bakken crude derailed, sending up a fireball in West Virginia.
Saturday’s accident marks the second derailment of a Canadian National oil train in the area in three weeks. A train with 100 cars, all carrying crude from the oil-producing region of Alberta to eastern Canada, derailed Feb. 14 about 30 miles north of Gogama. Twenty-nine cars were involved and seven caught fire, a spokesman said at the time.
“An initial pool fire occurred that we believe impacted five rail cars and that fire continues to burn,” BNSF, a unit of Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc., said Friday in a statement about the Illinois crash. “Local, state and BNSF Railway emergency personnel are on the scene working to contain the incident.”
Philadelphia Refinery
Twenty-one of the train’s 105 cars, which include two sand cars as buffers, jumped the tracks Thursday afternoon near Galena, Illinois, about 160 miles west of Chicago. The U.S. Department of Transportation said 14 cars were in a pileup and half of those were punctured. Emergency responders evacuated a 1-mile radius, which contained six homes. No injuries have been reported.
Mercuria, a Cyprus-based commodity trader, owns the crude and was working with the railway to investigate the accident, Matt J. Lauer, a Mercuria spokesman, said by telephone from Geneva. The oil was loaded at Bakken Oil Express LLC’s terminal in Eland, North Dakota, Joe Shotwell, operations director at the complex, said by phone on Friday.
Mercuria was shipping the oil to Philadelphia Energy Solutions LLC’s refinery in Philadelphia, a person familiar with the situation said, while asking not to be identified because the information isn’t public. The company will work to fulfill the plant’s order with alternative supplies, the person said.
Keystone Proposal
Philadelphia Energy Solutions spokeswoman Cherice Corley didn’t immediately respond to telephone and e-mailed requests for comment left after business hours. The company is a joint venture of Carlyle Group LP and Sunoco Inc., which was acquired by Energy Transfer Partners LP in October 2012.
Crude trains, which travel through crowded communities such as Chicago suburbs and New York state neighborhoods, have increased 40-fold since 2009 to 493,000 last year. Much of the crude originates in the Bakken because of insufficient pipelines to move the oil to refineries on the coasts.
Canadian oil will continue to be shipped by rail cars if pipelines, such as the Keystone XL line, aren’t built, the Canadian government has said. Some U.S. Republicans have cited the recent fiery derailments as an argument in favor of approving the divisive $8 billion Keystone proposal. The U.S. Senate on Wednesday failed to override President Barack Obama’s veto of a bill forcing approval of the U.S.-Canada oil link, a setback for Republicans who’ve made building it a legislative priority.
Safer Cars
The BNSF tank cars involved in Thursday’s incident were the CPC-1232 model, the railroad said in an e-mail. The industry began making the CPC-1232 tank car at the end of 2011 to increase safety over more numerous, so-called legacy cars.
The Transportation Department is set to issue new regulations for a safer tank car and modifications that will be required for legacy cars. The current cars may be on the tracks for years because of the time it takes to upgrade or replace them. The department also is considering an electronic braking system that would stop each car separately and help keep them from piling up. Railroads oppose the new braking system because of the cost.
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The Washington Post
Tuesday 17 February 2015
by reporter Joby WarrickTrains are carrying – and spilling – a record amount of oil
When 14 tanker cars derailed and exploded Monday near tiny Mount Carbon, West Virginia, neighbors likened the fireball to a scene from the apocalypse. It was "like something Biblical, or wrath-of-God type stuff", one resident said.
In fact, the oil spill and fire on the banks of the Kanawha River was the latest occurrence of a type of accident that U.S. officials say is becoming distressingly common. Federal agencies are documenting a dramatic rise in the number of rail mishaps involving oil tankers in the last three years, as North American producers scramble to find ways to transport surging oil output to markets.
The fiery explosion of oil-laden C.S.X. tanker cars along a snowy stretch of south-central West Virginia came just two days after a similar incident in eastern Ontario, and follows a year that shattered all previous records for rail accidents involving shipments of petroleum products.
More than 141 'unintentional releases' were reported from railroad tankers in 2014, an all-time high and a nearly six-fold increase over the average of 25 spills per year during the period from 1975 to 2012, according to records of the federal Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration. The year 2013 had fewer accidents but a much larger volume of spilled crude: 1.4 million gallons, an amount that exceeded the total for all spills since record-keeping began in 1975.
The increase adds yet another dimension to the controversy over the construction of oil pipelines such as the Keystone XL. Oil industry advocates contend that pipelines are safer than rail for moving flammable petroleum, while opponents say pipelines tend to experience much larger spills. The latest spill also highlights well-documented shortcomings in the local preparedness for accidents involving hazardous rail cargo, safety experts say.
"Back-to-back fiery derailments involving crude oil trains should be an unmistakable wake-up call to our political leaders", said Mollie Matteson, a senior scientist at the Center for Biological Diversity, an Arizona-based environmental group.
The toll from the latest disaster is far from clear. West Virginia Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin declared a state of emergency in two West Virginia counties as firefighters and hazmat crews worked for a second day to control the fire and contain an oil spill that contaminated a small creek and threatened to spread to the Kanawha River, a source of drinking water for cities and towns downstream. Nearly 2,500 people were evacuated when portions of the 109-car train derailed and then caught fire in a rural area southeast of Charleston.
Only one injury was reported, but a nearby house was destroyed as one tanker after another exploded, creating columns of smoke and flame that could be seen for miles. A C.S.X. spokesman had no immediate explanation for the accident but confirmed that leaking oil had already reached one of the Kanawha [River]’s tributaries.
"Fires around some of the cars will be allowed to burn out," the company said in a statement.
Transportation experts have long complained about inadequate oversight and gaps in local preparedness for such accidents. Earlier this month, the Obama administration began a review of proposed new rules for oil-hauling trains, including provisions that would mandate updated tanker designs for freight trains hauling flammable cargo. But on Tuesday, C.S.X. officials disclosed that the tankers that caught fire in West Virginia bore the latest design features, raising doubts over whether the new rules would have helped.
Part of the problem, energy experts say, is that transportation has not yet caught up with the sheer volume of oil being pumped by U.S. and Canadian companies in the past three years. In 2012, trains carried 40 times more oil than they did in 2008, and the volume doubled again in the following year, to about 400,000 tanker-car loads, according to figures posted by the Association of American Railroads. In production areas where pipelines are unavailable or at capacity, rail has become the transit choice by default, Charles Esser, an analyst with the International Energy Association, wrote in a recent blog.
"North American rail shipments of oil are by no means unprecedented, but until the recent surge in production, they were largely limited to stopgap, temporary use, with pipeline construction favored," Esser wrote. While overall only about 10 percent of U.S. crude moves by tanker car, nearly 70 percent of the production from North Dakota’s surging Bakken fields reaches refineries by rail, he said.
"Not surprisingly, accidents have increased, as well," Esser said. The petroleum that spilled in West Virginia on Monday originated in North Dakota and was headed for an oil terminal in Yorktown, Virginia.
As accidents mount, so do chances for major disasters that could pollute communities and the environment, Matteson said. She cited the July 2013 derailment in Quebec that killed 47 people and forced the evacuation of 2,000 people.
"People’s lives are at stake, clean drinking water is at stake, and the well-being of towns and wildlife along thousands of miles of rail line are directly in harm’s way of this unchecked, reckless increase in oil transport by rail," she said.
 
Associated Press / Tuesday 24 February 2015 / Ansted, WV
by reporter John Raby
Man runs from home as train derails nearby, engulfs property
[FOLLOWUP}: Morris Bounds Sr. said he still requires treatments to help with his breathing and can taste something funny inside his mouth. Investigators have not determined what caused the crash. The train was carrying 3 million gallons of North Dakota crude. Oil leaked into a Kanawha River tributary, forcing nearby water treatment plants to temporarily shut down. The fire took four days to burn out and work continues to remove the overturned tanks.
full text of story
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