It’s now been half a decade since the catastrophic Lac-Mégantic rail disaster in southern Quebec. On the night of July 6, 2013, a runaway train carrying shale oil from North Dakota exploded, killing 47 people and destroying most of the town’s centre.

But despite being the deadliest event in the country’s history since the Halifax Explosion in 1917, the Lac-Mégantic disaster has largely faded from the public’s consciousness outside of Quebec.

Bruce Campbell, the former executive director of the Canadian Centre of Policy Alternatives and expert in oil-by-rail regulations, wants to change that — and ensure that the proper people and policies are blamed. In his new book The Lac-Mégantic Rail Disaster: Public Betrayal, Justice Denied, Campbell traces with careful detail all the factors that led up to the catastrophe, including rail deregulation in the 1980s and 1990s, industry-captured regulators, reduction in crew sizes, unsafe train cars transporting volatile oil, and corporate reluctance to implement costly safety measures.

Some policies have been changed since. Many have not. And oil-by-rail shipments continue to grow.

In Lac-Mégantic itself, the memory of the disaster lingers, and has powered an ongoing push by locals and activists to clean up the industry and prevent a similar disaster from befalling another town.

In April 2018, the Quebec legislature issued a unanimous call for a public commission of inquiry into the disaster. The federal government rejected the request, saying the existing Transport Safety Board report explained everything in detail and that the necessary work has been completed. The federal government later opted to controversially reroute the tracks around the town.

The Narwhal chatted with Campbell about the causes of the disaster and what’s changed since — both for the oil-by-rail industry and for the town.

What made you want to write a book about the disaster in the first place? Was there a certain moment where you realized this was something you wanted to devote a couple of years to?

I watched it, like millions of others, and was horrified that it could happen so close to home. I’ve done a lot of policy work, including deregulation work. Once I started listening to the blame game going on, I thought I could provide something that would be independent, without any vested interests. My former colleague lost three members of her extended family. Two little girls and their mother. That certainly changed things.

You trace the disaster all the way back to the deregulation in the 1980s under Mulroney, and everything that followed. Why was it important for you to rewind it back to that point?

I didn’t start off as an expert on rail safety regulation, but the more I read it the more I saw the stages. I saw a series of policies that progressively removed safety protections and gave increasing power to the companies. Its enabler, or sibling policy — austerity — weakened the regulator. It became more and more dysfunctional internally. Of course, [Canadian National Railway] was privatized, which further enabled this process.

The landmarks were the Rail Safety Review Act, which came into force in 1988 and introduced rules which gave companies a lot of leeway to write the rules that were previously written by the department. They always had a lot of influence, but this really increased their ability to basically write the rules and the approval was largely a rubber stamp. They had great ability, as I documented throughout the book…to block, delay, dilute.

Then there was the privatization in the mid-90s, the budget cuts and the real quantum leap to the safety management system in 2001 — which in practice became the oxymoron of industry self-regulation. Of course, Harper came in with his ideology and the new regulatory policy. This was all happening at the same time as the recession, when they were re-elected in 2008, and that’s when the unconventional oil-by-rail boom got rolling.

Has the government shifted anything in its approach, or answered any of these questions in a meaningful way?

There have been a number of smaller or modest changes that happened, especially in the year after. Obviously, when something like this happens, the public wakes up and says “holy smokes, the government doesn’t have safety as its first priority.”

The government makes a big to-do about all of the things that it’s done. Some of them were important, like getting rid of single-person trains. They did that immediately, within weeks.

There were a number of high-profile things which I go into in the book. The Trudeau government comes in and [transportation minister Marc] Garneau says “rail safety is my top priority.” There were a number of things he did in big public announcements in 2016: he accelerated the elimination of remaining DOT-111 [oil-carrying train cars] and just recently of the unjacketed CPC-1232s, which are both slightly modified versions of the original DOT-111s.

Most fundamentally, it’s the regulatory capture issue.

It’s the ongoing relationship with the regulator: the necessary measures to strengthen the regulator to its capacity, its power, its resources. There’s been no change in that regard. There are still problems about brake securement. The whole safety management system is hugely problematic. They haven’t dealt with the problems. There’s still very little unannounced on-site inspections.

How is the community dealing with the legacy of this tragedy? Are impacts ongoing?

In 2016, I spoke at the anniversary event to the crowd. I built up this relationship. It was that relationship that really opened my eyes to the aftershocks. When the cameras go away, memories tend to fade and become more distant.

It’s one thing to talk about all the events that went on in the lead-up and the aftermath and what governments have done. But what’s going on inside?

Certainly, the people and activists I met are in a sense heroes in this story. They’re relentless and really courageous. The tendency — and it affects a large percent of the population — is that they’re worn out and apathetic and just want to move out and don’t want to hear anything more.

But they keep pushing. When I did my press conference on Parliament Hill, they came up from Lac Megantic to be there. They’re resolute.

There’s the ongoing trauma, the PTSD, the health effects, the environmental effects, the interaction with the wildlife and the air and how that’s affected health. There’s all of those things that are with the community five years after. You’ve got this big open desert where the town used to be. There’s a big open desert where the historic town centre was.

I make the analogy to Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine and the ‘disaster capitalists’ that came and persuaded the municipal council of a clean slate, just wipe everything out. So they destroyed, by order of municipal council, more buildings than were demolished in the actual fire. They argued it was just to be absolutely sure, but it was done. There’s still a lot of opposition to it.

Ambulance chasers and case runners came up from Texas: they basically conned the victims’ families with going with [them] and got a finders’ fee of $10 or $15 million. The Quebec bar wasn’t there to protect any of these people. They were totally vulnerable.

Those were some of the aftereffects.

The fact the coalition continues to find evidence of threats and risks to safety that haven’t been addressed. If those risks are still there — where there was the worst rail disaster — what’s happening in the rest of Canada if they allow these risks to continue to exist? It’s a real cautionary tale.

Where should we go from here?

To be clear, my book is not an argument for more pipelines as an alternative to rail. Pipeline dangers are well known, as is the Orwellian assertion that Canada can meet its climate commitments while at the same time increasing oil production.

Rather — to the extent that oil by rail is a reality and is growing, and Canada continues to expand the production and export of oil — fundamental changes are required to make it safer.

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In the weeks since Kinder Morgan’s announcement that it was suspending all “non-essential spending” on the proposed Trans Mountain pipeline, we’ve seen yet another round of concerns about a spike in the shipping of oil by rail.

The argument goes that failing to build Trans Mountain means that excess oil from Alberta will just be shipped to markets by rail — a more costly option with the potential for fiery spills and explosions in the middle of communities, like what happened in Lac-Mégantic back in 2013.

But there are two major issues with such analysis: 1) there’s not enough rail capacity to substitute for pipelines; and 2) transporting oil by rail wouldn’t be nearly as unsafe as it currently is if government updates its rules and enforcement.

Ignoring such realities may allow for convenient pro-pipeline mythmaking, but not for reasonable fact-based debate.

“Governments and industry uses it to fearmonger a little bit to justify pipeline capacity expansions,” said Patrick DeRochie, climate and energy program manager at Environmental Defence. “But if they were actually concerned about mitigating the risks of oil by rail, there are some pretty clear and simple steps they can take.”

Here’s a breakdown of what’s actually going on.

IEA predicts rail exports could nearly triple by 2019

In February 2018, the most recent month that we have data for, Canada shipped a daily average of 134,100 barrels of oil to the United States on trains. While not an insignificant amount, it was nowhere close to the historical high of December 2014 — when oil-by-rail exports hit 175,600 barrels per day (bpd) due to pipeline constraints.

Such figures don’t include oil that’s shipped by rail across Canada. A recent Globe & Mail article reported that more than 150,000 barrels of oil are moved daily on British Columbia’s railways. Much of that ends up being exported to the United States.

To put such numbers in perspective, Alberta produced an average of 3.4 million barrels of oil per day in February. So rail shipments represented only five per cent of the province’s output.

The concern is that those numbers will rapidly rise in the near future, well beyond the December 2014 threshold.

“It’s real and people have been predicting it,” said Bruce Campbell, former executive director of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives and author of an upcoming book about the Lac-Mégantic tragedy. “As production keeps increasing, there’s uncertainty about the pipelines, so there is that looming possibility.”

In March, the International Energy Agency forecasted that Canada’s oil-by-rail exports could increase to 250,000 bpd in 2018 and 390,000 bpd in 2019. Kevin Birn of IHS Markit told Reuters that exports could go higher than 400,000 bpd if pipelines face more delays.

To put all those numbers in perspective, the rosiest forecast would mean an increase of 266,000 barrels per day via rail. Meanwhile, Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain pipeline expansion proposes to add more than double that with 590,000 barrels per day of capacity.

CP and CN already facing major backlog of grain shipments

According to the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, there’s already a total of 754,000 bpd in rail loading capacity in Western Canada, including 210,000 bpd at Kinder Morgan’s very own co-owned terminal in Edmonton.

So why on earth aren’t oil producers using that spare rail capacity? Well, for the very same reason that some are doubtful oil-by-rail is going to see any kind of major increase: there simply aren’t enough trains to go around.

DeRochie is skeptical about projections by the International Energy Agency.

“There might be a small incremental increase in the oil being shipped by rail, but we’re looking at the tens of thousands of barrels, which is nowhere near the capacity that pipelines would introduce to the system,” DeRochie said.

Canada’s two freight rail companies, Canadian Pacific (CP) and Canadian National (CN), are facing ongoing criticism from grain producers on the Prairies for critical delays that have left massive quantities of wheat and canola unable to get to markets. Grain shipments are ultimately the “bread and butter” of freight rail in Canada — and the companies are failing to adequately service even them.

Rail companies look for long-term shippers

Both companies have rebuffed calls from the oil industry to enter into short-term contracts to ship more crude.

In a January conference call with investors, CP Rail CEO Keith Creel said: “We understand crude is only going to be here for a limited period of time. We are looking for strategic partners with long-term objectives that allows us to have a more stable book of business.”

Meanwhile, CN Rail requires a minimum of a year-long commitment from shippers.

Most oil companies aren’t prepared to enter into long-term contracts and are ultimately banking on new pipeline capacity opening up in the near future. After all, oil-by-rail tends to be more expensive — Birn of IHS Markit recently told CBC News that rail adds about $3 to $4 per barrel in costs — so even the ability to ship backlogged crude to market isn’t necessarily worth it given current oil prices. But rail companies won’t spend on new trains and tracks without commitment.

This week, Bloomberg reported that Cenovus had signed an oil-by-rail contract to start in the second half of the year, seeming to confirm earlier statements by CN.

But workers at CP Rail are on the verge of striking, which could shut down shipping for weeks or months. CN Rail’s CEO has already stated that his company won’t be able to “pick up the slack” if it proceeds. While likely not a long-term issue, the potential strike action represents yet another source of unpredictability for oil producers.

B.C.’s proposed regulations could curtail shipments

Add to those issues the fact that B.C.’s proposed regulations on the transport of diluted bitumen would apply to rail.

In its reference case submitted to the B.C. Court of Appeal this week, the B.C. government outlined regulations that would apply to pipelines transporting any quantity of liquid petroleum products, as well as rail or truck operations transporting more than 10,000 litres of liquid petroleum products.

The proposed regulations would require shippers to meet several spill response criteria to obtain a “hazardous substance permit” from the government.

‘Industry still seems to be running the show’

For the sake of argument, let’s assume that companies evade all these obstacles and oil-by-rail exports triple to more than 400,000 barrels per day by 2019.

There’s simply no reason that shipping oil on trains needs to be as dangerous as it currently is. As we’ve previously reported, there are a wide range of changes that could be introduced by the federal government to greatly reduce risk — amend the Railway Safety Act to restrict certain volumes of dangerous goods, accelerate the phase-out of existing railcars, increase the number of on-site inspections and improve public transparency.

But with the exception of minor changes, the federal government hasn’t moved to make rail transport of oil safe

“The industry is powerful,” Campbell said. “I’ve talked a lot about regulatory capture. Transport Canada, as far as I can tell, is still as dysfunctional as ever. Industry still seems to be running the show, and resources seem to be as wanting, to say the least. You’ve got a weak regulator with insufficient resources.”

The report of the Railway Safety Act Review is expected to be released soon, but Campbell is “almost positive” that it won’t lead to a fundamental rethinking of the system.

Shipping raw bitumen by rail eliminates costly diluent, reduces risk of explosions

There are actually many upsides to transporting oil by rail instead of pipeline.

It physically moves faster in unit trains than pipeline, and doesn’t mix with other grades of petroleum as it does with pipeline “batching.” Rail terminals are also quite low in cost — the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers reported in 2014 that a typical unit train terminal ranges between $30 million to $50 million and can be paid off in five years or less.

There’s also the potential to ship raw bitumen by rail in a form known as “neatbit.”

As the name suggests, diluted bitumen that’s transported by pipeline requires diluent, a costly natural gas condensate that takes up about 30 per cent of volume in a shipment. Diluent also serves as the volatile component of the mixture, which can explode in a crash. Shipping bitumen by rail without diluent would save companies money and prevent the risk of explosions.

But it requires upfront costs to purchase heated tanker cars and special loading terminals. It’s effectively the same thing preventing the electrification of freight rail, which would greatly reduce greenhouse gas emissions and fuel costs: it just costs too much cash to get started, even though the payoffs would be enormous. Until the government regulates such activities, it likely won’t happen — and the safety of communities will continue to be at risk.

“The reality is that the stuff is going to keep rumbling through Canadians towns and cities across the country,” Campbell said. “While it’s doing that for the next five years or more, make it safer. There are things that can be done.”

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The train engineer and two additional rail workers who faced charges for the deadly July 2013 oil train accident in Lac-Mégantic, Quebec, were acquitted on Friday after the jury deliberated for nine days. If convicted of all charges, they potentially faced life in prison. 

The end of the trial of these three employees for their role in the Canadian oil train disaster that resulted in 47 deaths and the destruction of much of downtown Lac-Mégantic appears to have brought some closure to residents of the still-recovering town — although most are still waiting for justice.

As the trial began, the BBC reported the sentiments of Lac-Mégantic resident Jean Paradis, who lost three friends in the accident and thought the wrong people were on trial.

“It's clear to me the main shareholder, MMA, are not here. Transport Canada is not here. Transport Canada have let cheap companies run railroads in Canada with less money for more profit…” Paridis told the BBC. Transport Canada is the Canadian regulatory agency with rail oversight.

Another resident, Jean Clusiault, who lost his daughter in the disaster, told the CBC that after the decision, "I felt relieved because these are not the right people who should be there.”

The sentiment that these three men should not have been found guilty was even expressed by the former CEO of the rail company that operated the train that caused the disaster.

"I was happy when I heard the verdict. I think the jury made the right decision," Edward Burkhardt, former chairman of rail company Montreal, Maine and Atlantic (MMA), told Radio-Canada.

No rail executives, politicians, or regulators were ever charged with any crimes relating to the Lac-Mégantic disaster.

Based on the past four years of reporting on the literal and figurative boom in Bakken oil trains, I have written a book about the story of the bomb trains — from Lac-Mégantic to Trump — which addresses the question of who was to blame for the lethal accident in this small Quebec town and for the many oil train accidents across North America that followed.

The following is the first chapter of that book, detailing what happened in Lac-Mégantic on July 6, 2013.

Chapter 1: Lac-Mégantic

On the evening of July 5, 2013, Thomas Harding finished his shift for the Montreal, Maine & Atlantic (MMA) Railway driving a train full of Bakken crude oil across rural Canada. Harding parked the train on a track siding in Nantes, Quebec, and called to tell the dispatcher that the train was secure.

Harding then called another rail traffic controller in Bangor, Maine, and noted that there had been excessive smoke coming from the locomotive on his trip. He was advised not to worry about it and another engineer was scheduled to take the train in the morning from Nantes to its destination — an oil refinery in Saint John, New Brunswick. Nothing was done about the smoking engine, despite the fact that the train’s cargo was classified as a hazardous flammable material.

And so Harding followed these instructions. The train was left on a track siding in Nantes — running, unlocked, and unattended — as was standard practice and perfectly within regulations. The tracks run right alongside the rural road that connects Nantes to the town of Lac-Mégantic. Harding called a taxi and was taken to a nearby hotel in Lac-Mégantic for the night.

Investigations later revealed that Harding made a critical error that night. After applying manual hand brakes on the locomotives and two tank cars, he was supposed to turn off the air braking system and make sure that the hand brakes would hold the train on their own. He ran that test with the air brakes on, which combined with the hand brakes, provided sufficient braking force to keep the train in place.

At some point that evening after Harding had left, someone driving down the road noticed the locomotive was on fire and called the local fire department — which responded and put out the fire.

According to the accident report, “the firefighters moved the electrical breakers inside the cab to the off position, in keeping with railway instructions. They then met with an MMA employee, a track foreman who had been dispatched to the scene but who did not have a locomotive operations background.” 1

Turning off a locomotive that had been on fire seems like a reasonable thing to do, especially because no one on the scene had expertise in operating a locomotive.

Reasonable except for one fact. The braking system on this oil train was based on technology designed in the late 1800s — the same braking system used on most oil trains in North America — and requires constant air pressure to keep the train braked. Air brakes were revolutionary safety technology when introduced to the rail industry in the 1860s, but now,  understandably, are no longer state of the art.

As the firefighters drove away from the train that night, the air pressure in the braking system began to decrease. When they shut off the locomotive engine, they also unwittingly shut off the power that was maintaining the air pressure in the braking system.

Eventually the brake system’s air pressure decreased to a point where the train began to move down the hill towards Lac-Mégantic. Despite this obvious flaw in rail safety, at the time there were no regulations saying that a train full of flammable liquids parked on a hill above a residential area needed to also have a mechanical device placed on the track to make sure the train could not “run away.” Years later, there still is no such regulation, despite this being a cheap and effective safety measure.

And, so, the train began to roll towards Lac-Mégantic. The rail tracks and road next to it are essentially a straight shot downhill into the center of town. With no curves to navigate, the runaway train remained on the tracks, gaining speed on the six miles of track from Nantes to Lac-Mégantic.

When the train reached town, it was moving over 60 miles per hour. At this point the train passed Gilles Fluet, a local resident who had just left the popular nightspot the Musi-Cafe.

“It was moving at a hellish speed … no lights, no signals, nothing at all,” he said. “There was no warning. It was a black blob that came out of nowhere.” 2 

Once the train passed Fluet, it quickly arrived at a point where the tracks turned left. Here the train left the tracks and shot straight into the heart of downtown Lac-Mégantic and the Musi-Cafe that Gilles Fluet had just left.

More than half of the people who died that night were in the Musi-Cafe. One lucky survivor described what happened to The Globe and Mail.

“The entire bar went pitch black, then turned orange — brighter than the middle of the day, a blinding, lively orange … That was the last time I saw any of them.”3

The sounds of the accident woke Thomas Harding and much of Lac-Mégantic at around 1:15 a.m. At 1:47, Harding called a rail dispatcher and described the scene:4

“Everything is on fire — from the church all the way down to the Metro, from the river all the way to the railway tracks. From what I can see, RJ, the box cars have all burnt in the yard — the ties, everything. Whatever is in the yard, rolling stock, is now gone — completely.”

However, neither Harding nor the dispatcher, RJ, were yet aware it was their MMA train involved in the crash and fires.

RJ: What the f*** happened?

TH: I don’t know. I don’t know, but everything, everything … I woke up 20 minutes ago. Evacuate, evacuate, right away.

Harding reportedly helped firefighters move some of the full oil tank cars that were still on the tracks away from the fires. He then called the dispatcher again at 3:29 a.m., at which point he was informed it was his train.

RJ: It’s uh, it’s your train that rolled down.

TH: No!

RJ: Yes, sir.

TH: No, RJ.

RJ: Yes, sir.

TH: Holy f**k. F**k!

TH: She was f***ing secure. F**k!

RJ: That’s what, that’s what I got as news.

Another person awakened in downtown Lac-Mégantic that night was the local fire chief Denis Lauzon. When he opened his front door to see the disaster, his response was simply: “Ok, We’re in hell.” 5 

While firefighters worked to evacuate people, they were not equipped to deal with the fire, and as Chief Lauzon noted, there was no way to rescue the 47 people who died.

“The 47 people were at the wrong place at the wrong moment. They couldn’t survive that type of fire.”

Around 3:45 a.m., as the explosions stopped, the firefighters attempted to move in to deal with the fire — when another tank car exploded in front of them. The firefighters retreated and the fire would end up burning for three days.

The train was carrying Bakken crude oil in DOT-111 tank cars. For over 20 years, the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) had warned against using the DOT-111 tank cars for moving flammable liquids like oil.6 These tank cars were known to easily puncture at speeds of under 20 miles per hour. At over 60 miles per hour there was no question what would happen. More than 60 of the 72 loaded oil tank cars derailed, spilling over one million gallons of oil.

The spilled oil ignited immediately, creating “rivers of fire” throughout downtown Lac-Mégantic, consuming much of the area and 47 people. Those rivers of fire traveled downhill from the tracks all the way to the river and destroyed almost everything in between.

When the reports of what went wrong were filed, it was clear that the oil and rail industries’ quest for profits over safety was to blame, along with lax regulatory oversight. Long before official accident reports detailed what led to the disaster, a columnist in The Guardian accurately described Lac-Mégantic as “a corporate crime scene.” 7

The Transportation Safety Board of Canada’s accident report for Lac-Mégantic found 18 discrete factors that contributed to the accident. It started with a cheap and improper repair to the locomotive that resulted in the engine fire but extended to lax regulatory oversight and a culture of cost-cutting at the expense of safety at the railroad.

Additionally, regulations allowed these oil trains to operate with only one person on board — another cost-saving measure. That meant Harding did not have anyone to double-check his work braking the train.

After reviewing all of the accident’s details, Wendy Tadros, head of the Transportation Safety Board of Canada, had the following question.8

“Who was the guardian of public safety? That is the role of the government to provide checks and balances and oversight, yet this booming industry where unit trains were shipping more and more oil across Canada and across the border ran largely unchecked.”

So who was held accountable for this disaster? MMA only had a small amount of insurance and quickly declared bankruptcy. The owner of MMA was not charged. And later, as part of the bankruptcy hearing, one of the largest hedge funds in the world bought the rail company and resumed moving trains through Lac-Mégantic — something strongly opposed by the residents.

While there were no immediate answers to why the fires and explosions in Lac-Mégantic were so intense, oil companies continued to load the same Bakken oil into the same DOT-111 tank cars and ship it across North America through towns and cities as if nothing had happened.

Less than six months later, in November 2013, a Bakken oil train derailed in the wetlands of rural Alabama where it exploded like the train in Lac-Mégantic and spilled over 500,000 gallons of oil.

A month later, a Bakken train derailed in Casselton, North Dakota, resulting in more mushroom clouds of fire, an oil spill of 400,000 gallons, and the evacuation of the local town. And then another Bakken oil train derailed and exploded in Canada. As the evidence piled up about the dangers of these new Bakken oil trains, rail workers began calling them “bomb trains.”9

And people in Lac-Mégantic and across North America began demanding change.

In May of 2014, a tactical unit of the Quebec provincial police force, La Sûreté du Québec, the equivalent of a U.S. SWAT unit, arrived at Thomas Harding’s house where they found him in his backyard with his son and a friend. The three were thrown to the ground, and Harding was handcuffed, despite being cooperative throughout the investigation.

The official response to what was described as a “corporate crime scene” was to blame the lowest level employee involved and send in a SWAT team to arrest him at his home. Two other employees were arrested as well. Was Thomas Harding the one who had let the growth of these oil trains go “largely unchecked”?

A columnist for Canada’s National Post called the event “embarrassing” and a “politically motivated stunt.”10

There is one more fact about this accident that makes the arrest of Harding all that more outrageous. There were three braking systems on the train parked at Nantes. There are the hand brakes, as well as two air-brake systems: the independent brake on the locomotives, and the automatic brake, which holds the rest of the rail cars in place.

Harding set the independent brake and hand brakes but did not set the automatic brake, because he was following MMA’s corporate policy.

The brakes he did apply were sufficient to hold the train. But then the locomotive caught fire that night and the fire department cut power to the engine, which led to the loss of pressure in the independent brake and the train “running away” down the hill towards Lac-Mégantic.

It would have taken Harding 10 seconds to engage the automatic brake. If this had been done, the train most likely would have remained in place until it was scheduled to continue the next morning — even with the locomotive powered down. But company policy was to not engage the automatic brake even when parking a loaded train of explosive Bakken oil on a hill above a town. Why not?

Because while it takes only 10 seconds to engage the braking system, it takes between 15 minutes and an hour to disengage the system when the train is restarted the next day. And in the rail industry, time is money. So, in order to save that time, the company simply chose not to instruct its engineers to engage the automatic brakes and enshrined this in corporate policy, as was noted in the Transportation Safety Canada report on the accident, where it states:  

While MMA instructions did not allow the automatic brakes to be set following a proper hand brake effectiveness test, doing so would have acted as a temporary secondary defence, one that likely would have kept the train secured, even after the eventual release of the independent brakes.11 

Harding was simply following the rules.

The Globe and Mail first reported this situation in March of 2016 in an article titled, “Ten-second procedure might have averted Lac-Mégantic disaster.”

The publication asked the Canadian regulatory agency how this could be possible:

Asked why the railway was able to issue such an instruction to its staff, Transport Canada told The Globe that its role is “to monitor railway companies for compliance with rules, regulations and standards through audits and safety inspections.” However, the department added, “Transport Canada does not approve or enforce company instructions.”12

No SWAT teams have been sent to the offices of oil or rail company executives. And yet they knowingly still ship trains full of oil in unsafe tank cars throughout North America. In 2016 — three years after the Lac-Mégantic disaster — the head of the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board warned that a “Lac-Mégantic” type accident could happen in an American city at any time.13

When Harding and two other rail employees were frog marched into court by the police after their arrest, Ghislain Champagne, the father of a woman who died in the Lac-Mégantic accident, yelled out, “It’s not them we want.”

This book is about the people Ghislain Champagne and many others would like to see held responsible for these corporate crimes. The ones who are responsible for the disaster in Lac-Mégantic and the rise of bomb trains in North America. The ones who make corporate policies that put profits over safety. And how the rise of the Bakken bomb trains in America illustrates just how badly broken the American regulatory and political system is — where corporate profits always trump the safety of citizens and the environment.

1. Transportation Safety Board of Canada, “Lac-Mégantic runaway train and derailment investigation summary,” October 28, 2014
2. David Crary and Sean Farrell, “In Lac-Mégantic, ‘the train from hell’”, Associated Press, July 14, 2013
3. Justin Giovannetti,”Last moments of Lac-Mégantic: Survivors share their stories,” The Globe and Mail, November 28, 2013
4. Alex Finnis, “Audio emerges of the panicked moment driver realised his train had derailed, killing 47 people,” DailyMail.com, August 22, 2014
5. Erik Atkins, “‘Okay, we’re in hell’: Lac-Mégantic fire chief recounts night of train explosion”, The Globe and Mail, October 16, 2014
6. Curtis Tate, “Railroad tank-car safety woes date decades before crude oil concerns,” McClatchy, January 27, 2014
7. Martin Lukacs, “Quebec's Lac-Mégantic oil train disaster not just tragedy, but corporate crime,” The Guardian, July 11, 2013
8. Rob Gillies, “Investigators release Quebec train disaster report,” Associated Press, August 19, 2014
9. James MacPherson and Matthew Brown, “Safety questions after ND oil train derailment,” Associated Press, December 3, 2013
10. Matt Gurney, “Arrest of Lac Mégantic engineer an embarrassing sideshow,” National Post, May 14, 2014
11. Transportation Safety Board of Canada, “Railway Investigation Report – R13D0054,” TSB.ca
12. Grant Robertson, “Ten-second procedure might have averted Lac-Mégantic disaster,” The Globe and Mail, March 7, 2016
13. Ashley Halsey III, “NTSB’s ‘10 Most Wanted’ list for 2016 underscores need for rail safety,” Washington Post, January 13, 2016

Main image: Lac-Mégantic after the oil train accident. Credit: Transportation Safety Board of Canada

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

In recent months, there’s been a re-emergence of one of the oil industry’s most adored tropes: that without new pipelines, companies will ship oil by rail and threaten entire communities with derailments, explosions and spills.

The jury’s still very much out on whether shipments will actually increase by much more than what we’ve seen in the past. Regardless, there’s one thing that strangely never gets mentioned by proponents of the argument.

Transporting oil by rail doesn’t have to be nearly as dangerous as it currently is.

In fact, there are many rules and regulations that could be implemented by the federal government to help avoid another disaster like what happened in Lac-Mégantic, Quebec, or Gogama, Ontario.

ICYMI: How the Spectre of Oil Trains is Deceptively Used to Push Pipelines

“We live within metres of the transcontinental CP line,” Patricia Lai, co-founder of Safe Rail Communities, told DeSmog Canada. “This is very real for us on a daily basis, and we know this exists for communities across the country. It’s fantastic to say that you’re committed, but we really need some action to happen more quickly.”

Here are just a few things the federal government can do to dramatically improve oil-by-rail safety.

Require Proper Assessments for Oil-By-Rail Projects

As MP Linda Duncan put it in an interview with DeSmog Canada, rail is the only industrial sector that’s effectively exempt from the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act.

To be sure, there are provisions in the legislation related to rail. But the way that environmental assessments work is that a “physical activity” such as building a new pipeline or dam of a certain length or capacity will trigger an assessment.

An assessment will get triggered if a new railway of 32 kilometres or more is built. Same with a rail yard with “seven or more yard tracks or a total track length of 20 km or more.” But the trigger doesn’t have anything to do with what’s actually being shipped on existing CP or CN railways.

“It doesn’t matter if one of the two major rail lines increases by a thousand-fold the transport of dangerous goods,” said Duncan, who introduced a private member’s bill in 2016 to improve oil-by-rail safety.

“They can transport whatever they want, at any time, in an overloaded many-mile-long train and continue not to maintain their tracks or trains properly.”

Duncan’s bill would require two related changes.

The first would amend the Railway Safety Act to restrict the shipment of dangerous goods to certain volumes unless the transport minister authorizes an exemption. Secondly, the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act would require the environment minister to trigger an assessment if the activity poses a “potentially significant risk to the environment, human life or public health.”

“What I’m proposing is the tip of the iceberg,” said Duncan, who previously served as opposition transport critic.

While Transport Minister Marc Garneau has repeatedly stated that rail safety is a top priority for him and the federal government, he hasn’t yet voiced support for the bill.

Charles Hatt, staff lawyer at Ecojustice, said he’s seen something similar in his communications with Environment Minister Catherine McKenna on the subject. Ecojustice has requested the federal government to order assessments on all oil-by-rail terminals regardless of size.

“We know the rather appalling gap in the legislation for these kind of activities was pointed out directly to the minister and we suggested actions she could take, and she chose not to,” Hatt told DeSmog Canada. “There’s no doubt what this government thinks about this issue.”

Six Simple Ways Canada Can Make #Oil-By-Rail Way Safer https://t.co/jJGYuHzchh #cdnpoli #oiltrains #neatbit #lacmegantic #gogama

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) November 15, 2017

Accelerate Phase-Out of Older Train Models

In July 2016, the federal government announced the accelerated phase-out of the DOT-111 railcar for transporting oil.

That was the same model of railcar used in the Lac-Mégantic disaster, long criticized for being susceptible to puncture and explosions due to insufficiently thick walls and lack of full heat shield. Now, crude oil is transported by models such as the CPC-1232 (a modified version of the DOT-111) and the new DOT-117, which will replace all models by 2025.

ICYMI: What Have We Learned From the Lac-Megantic Oil Train Disaster?

But that’s many years away.

According to Bruce Campbell, former executive director of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives and author of an upcoming book on the Lac-Mégantic disaster, about 86 per cent of tank cars that transport crude oil are the modified versions of the DOT-111. Those only represent a slight improvement and have already been involved in multiple explosive derailments.

“It’s great that tank cars will have improved by 2025,” Lai, from Safe Rail Communities, said. “But we don’t even know for sure if those tank cars are strong enough.”

Reduce Volatility of Oil Before Shipment

An associated issue is that companies could easily reduce the volatility of oil by a process called “stabilizing,” which sees the flammable natural gas liquids removed from the product.

But that would cost money, around $2 per barrel according to North Dakota regulators.

“Oil companies have resisted strenuously doing anything to stabilize oil before it goes into the tank cars, removing its most volatile components,” Campbell said in an interview with DeSmog Canada.

ICYMI: Fiery Saskatchewan Train Derailment Raises Fresh Questions About Oil-By-Rail Safety

“There’s a way to transport bitumen in its raw form, which is not volatile. But that requires special heated cars.”

Raw bitumen, also referred to as “neatbit,” would greatly reduce the amount of diluent used in shipping bitumen and in turn decrease the risk levels of oil-by-rail. The process would require a significant amount of capital investment, and hasn’t been explored much by industry.

End Self-Regulation, Increase Government Enforcement

In 2001, the government introduced a new approach to regulating rail, called “safety management systems.” Essentially, it means that rail companies craft and implement safety protocols and the federal government audits them.

But critics don’t think it’s nearly sufficient.

“It’s self regulation if it’s the companies doing it,” Campbell said.“The whole idea was that it was supposed to be an additional layer to conventional direct oversight. Of course, it isn’t, because they didn’t give Transport Canada the resources or the money.”

The Transportation Safety Board of Canada specifically identified a lack of safety culture, oversight and enforcement by Transport Canada as contributing factors for Lac-Mégantic, recommending that the department must make sure “not just that [safety management systems] exist, but that they are working and that they are effective.”

Yet in a December 2016 speech at a conference about Lac-Mégantic, Union of Canadian Transportation Employees president Christine Collins said that there still hadn’t been a significant change in the number or quality of inspectors, resources dedicated to the task, or any indication that newly announced federal funding for rail safety would actually improve safety standards.

Campbell added the actual number of rail safety inspectors and dangerous goods inspectors hasn’t increased since at least 2004, despite oil-by-rail shipments skyrocketing in volume.

“On-site unannounced inspections have just shrunk and it’s more and more just a paper exercise,” he said.

Listen to the Public

Then there’s the challenge of actually being able to influence how things are done given that almost all the major decisions made behind closed doors.

“It’s an internal conversation between the railway companies and the ministry,” Campbell said. “There’s no public consultation process. Nominally, they consult with the unions but they’re under no obligation.”

A related impediment to understanding the issues is that there’s very little information out there on the actual amount of oil being transported in Canada. While the National Energy Board reports the monthly volume of exports by rail to the U.S., there’s no similar numbers for internal shipments.

In addition, risk assessments and evaluations conducted by the companies are protected by commercial confidentiality, meaning that the public doesn’t have access to them. Combine that with lack of consultation, and it’s obvious there are improvements to be made when it comes to transparency and consultation.

“We really need to have more input on a regular basis,” Lai said.

“There has to be a better mechanism for moving things forward rather than saying ‘come and share with us what your concerns are and we’ll take it away.’ I think there really has to be some kind of working group or network struck that really does include stakeholders like the public who are really affected by this kind of thing.”

More Solutions At Hand

These solutions could massively increase the safety of oil-by-rail and even then, there are many more waiting to be implemented.

The government could require companies to reroute tracks to avoid heavily populated areas, or implement a new fatigue management framework, or order a strategic environmental assessment of all oil-by-rail shipments, or implement advanced rail safety technologies.

And, according to Duncan, the idea of dangerous oil-by-rail should no longer be used as an argument to push for pipeline projects.

“I get really tired of oil companies arguing they should be able to build pipelines because rail is more dangerous,” Duncan said. “That’s a really specious argument. We need to be making sure that we’re properly reviewing all means of transport of dangerous materials.”

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

Either support new pipelines or your community will be incinerated by an oil-carrying train.

It sounds outrageous, but it’s been a foundational argument made by the pro-pipeline lobby ever since the horrific Lac-Mégantic disaster in 2013.

“This is almost like putting a gun to the head of communities, saying ‘well, if we don’t build our pipeline then we’re going to put more oil-by-rail traffic through your community,’ ” says Patrick DeRochie, program manager of Environmental Defence’s climate and energy program.

“I think that’s dishonest and the oil industry’s really manipulating legitimate public concerns about rail safety to push pipelines.”

On Dec. 20, 2016 — less than a month after the federal approvals of the Kinder Morgan TransMountain and Enbridge Line 3 pipelines — Prime Minister Justin Trudeau clearly stated that “putting in a pipeline is a way of preventing oil by rail, which is more dangerous and more expensive.”

The fact that it’s an oft-repeated sentiment shouldn’t overshadow the fact that this is a completely false binary.

Canada is hardly shipping any oil by rail. It never has.

And the only way that oil-by-rail shipments will seriously increase as predicted by the Canadian Energy Research Institute and National Energy Board is if Canada continues with its plan to allow for the massive expansion of Alberta’s oilsands in the coming decades, a move that will undermine calls for a moratorium on all new fossil fuel infrastructure in order to avoid the effects of catastrophic climate change.

Highest Amount Ever Exported by Rail Was Mere 178,000 Barrels Per Day

Here are the numbers on oil-by-rail.

In September 2016 — the most recent month reported by the National Energy Board on the subject — oil-by-rail exports to the United States were 69,292 barrels per day (bpd).

They had dipped as low as 43,205 bpd in June 2016.

This obviously reflects the extremely low per-barrel price that bitumen is fetching from American refineries, which is also why there’s currently around 400,000 bpd of spare capacity in the pipeline network.

Plus, oil-by-rail generally costs more than shipping oil by pipeline, making it an even less viable option in such economic times.

But rail shipments have never been particularly notable relative to total crude oil production.

In fact, oil-by-rail’s high point in recent years was in September 2014, when 178,989 bpd were transported to the U.S.

The same year, Canada was exporting a total of 2.85 million bpd. In other words, at its very peak, oil-by-rail accounted for a mere 6.28 per cent of total exports.

Newly Approved Pipelines Quadruple Capacity Historically Shipped by Rail

It should also be noted that not all oil transported by rail is exported to the States, with some simply transported to other parts of the country for storage or usage for purposes such as asphalt.

For instance, the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers reports the oil-by-rail hit “almost 200,000 bpd by the end of 2013,” despite the NEB only reporting 166,570 bpd in rail exports during December 2013.

Domestic transport also helps explain why the Canadian Energy Research Institute reported in 2014 that about 35,000 bpd of oil-by-rail from Western Canada wasn’t exported to the United States (and thus not counted by the NEB).

Incredibly, nobody is keeping detailed, accurate numbers on oil-by-rail.

But we can assume — generously — that the highest oil-by-rail shipments have ever hit in Canada is 225,000 bpd (180,000 bpd in exports and another 45,000 bpd in cross-country transport).

The recent approvals of the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain and Enbridge Line 3 pipelines will allow for the addition of 900,000 bpd in pipeline capacity from the oilsands, assuming a 15 per cent surplus for outages and maintenance.

That’s four times the amount of oil that has ever been shipped by rail, either for exports or domestic transport.

New pipelines are not about “displacing” oil currently being shipped by rail — there’s simply no evidence for that.

Instead, new pipelines are about preparing for a massive expansion of the oilsands by almost two million bpd between 2015 and 2040, and weaponizing people’s fears of oil-by-rail to do so.

How the Spectre of Oil Trains is Deceptively Used to Push Pipelines https://t.co/mWbMw5F4SK @james_m_wilt #cdnpoli #oilbyrail #propaganda

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) January 6, 2017

Oil-By-Rail Unsafe Because of Regulatory Lack

But there’s a second and related key problem with the pipeline versus rail debate, further undermining the argument for new pipelines.

Specifically, that there are technologies and regulations available to ensure that oil being shipped by rail is far safer than what the current rules mandate.

As a result, combined exports and domestic transport via rail could even rebound to 200,000 or 250,000 bpd and we’d never have to seriously worry about a Lac-Mégantic-like disaster again.

How?

Transport Canada could require rail companies to increase the number of inspectors and crew members on trains, reduce speed limits and require certain braking system protocols and better public disclosure.

The phase-out of the old CPC-1232 tank railcars and transition to new and safer TC-117 tank railcars could be accelerated. The federal environment minister could be required to order an environmental assessment of oil-by-rail projects, as recommended in September 2016 by NDP MP Linda Duncan.

‘Neatbit’ Would Reduce Risk of Explosions and Spills, But Initially Increase Costs

And then there’s the increasingly popular idea of “neatbit.”

Bitumen from the oilsands is current shipped in both pipeline and train in a form called “dilbit,” which requires about 30 per cent of diluent to allow it move. The diluent, usually made of a natural gas-based condensate, makes the mixture highly flammable, explosive and difficult to contain in spills.

These characteristics are dangerously compounded in the case of train accidents.

Conversely, “neatbit” only requires one to two per cent of diluent.

The product thus has the consistency of peanut butter, meaning it won’t flow in the event of a spill. It also doesn’t catch fire or explode.

David Hughes, expert on unconventional fuels and author of multiple reports for the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA), says: “In effect, shipping raw bitumen by rail is likely a safer alternative than pipelines.”

Shipping bitumen as neatbit would arguably save companies money in the long term. But it would also require a bit of upfront capital, and policy direction from governments.

Heavy oil refineries don’t have the infrastructure to receive it. It would take longer to unload. Upstream companies would have to build diluent recovery units and invest in insulated tank railcars with heated coils to keep the bitumen somewhat soft during transport.

And unlike pipelines, oil-by-rail doesn’t result in a “carbon lock-in” given that many other commodities can be transported by rail.

Bruce Campbell of the CCPA has concluded the oil industry “is not in any hurry to make the transition because of the (relatively modest) upfront investment.”

Kai Nagata of the Dogwood Initiative agrees: “The oil companies don’t want to do anything that is inconvenient or that would require them to build new facilities or spend more money. So far, I don’t think there’s much interest in moving that inert form of bitumen in regular rail cars.”

‘It’s Purely Out of a Profit Motive That They Invoke the Comparison’

Not only is it deceptive to claim that new pipelines are needed to replace oil-by-rail, but it also ignores the fact that oil-by-rail can be made much safer than it is at the moment (although it will continue to be more carbon-intensive due to its current reliance on diesel as fuel).

Yet Lac-Mégantic continues to be subtly weaponized by corporate execs and politicians as if these two facts aren’t true, or even worthy of acknowledgement.

Oil-by-rail has never been a major player in Canada. It never will be if international climate commitments are honoured. And even if it is used as a way to offer some flexibility to producers, it can be done in a way that’s safer than current practices require.

Nagata suggests that such players are relying on people’s fears about a non-issue in order to force them to a point of compromise that would allow them to build pipeline expansion infrastructure.

“It’s purely out of a profit motive that they invoke the comparison,” he says. “Not out of any sense of concern for the safety of communities along the route.”

DeRochie agrees: “It’s a legitimate concern. And I think the oil industry grasped onto that and used it as a scare tactic to push pipelines.”

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

Brian Stevens first learned about the Lac-Megantic disaster — in which an unattended oil train caught fire and exploded, killing 47 people in the Quebec town — when he saw the news reports on TV.

Stevens is currently National Rail Director for Unifor, Canada’s largest private sector union, but he previously spent 16 years as an air-brake mechanic working on trains. At a recent conference in Ottawa examining lessons from the 2013 Lac-Megantic rail disaster, he recounted his reaction to seeing those initial scenes of destruction.  

“That ain’t Canada, that can’t happen in North America because our brake systems won’t allow that,” he said when he eventually learned the images he was seeing were from Canada. “My heart sank … It was crushing.”  

Stevens went on to explain his opinion of the root cause of the problem, summing up the challenges in Canada with one simple statement: “The railways write the rules.” 

He also placed blame on the deregulation of the Canadian rail industry that began more than three decades ago.

“Lac Megantic started in 1984. It was destined to happen,” said Stevens, referring to the start of that deregulation.

One example of the effects of deregulation can be seen in the cuts to the number of people conducting inspections, from over 7,000 railway and rail car inspectors in 1984, down to “less than 2,000” now, according to Stevens. 

He didn't mince words about what he's seen change in the three years since Canada's worst rail accident.

"The railway barons continue to exist and continue to drive the industry and the government," said Stevens.

Lac-Megantic before and after the oil train explosion. Credit: Claude Grenier, Studio Numéra, Lac-Mégantic.

The Railroad Rule That Allowed Lac-Megantic 

Stevens' initial reaction to the images from Lac-Megantic was based on the idea that the braking systems on North American trains would prevent the kind of brake failure and derailment seen in the devestated Quebec town. Which by all accounts is true — if those braking systems are properly applied.

In this case, they were not — as part of company policy, which goes back to Stevens' assertion that the “railways write the rules.”  

There are three components of the braking system on a train like the one which rolled into and destroyed Lac-Megantic. There are the hand brakes and two air-brake systems: the independent brake on the locomotives, and the automatic brake, which holds the rest of the rail cars in place.

Thomas Harding, the person who parked the train that caused the accident in Lac-Megantic, has been blamed for not setting enough handbrakes on the train that night.

What has been overlooked is the corporate policy of not engaging the “automatic brake” when leaving a train on the tracks. Harding set the independent brake and handbrakes but did not set the automatic brake because that was corporate policy.  

The brakes he did apply were sufficient to hold the train. But then the locomotive caught fire that night and the fire department cut power to the locomotive, which led to the loss of pressure in the independent brake and the train “running away” down the hill towards Lac-Megantic. 

It would have taken Harding 10 seconds to engage the automatic brake. If this had been done, the train most likely would have remained in place until it was scheduled to continue the next morning. But company policy was to not engage the automatic brake even when parking a loaded train of explosive Bakken oil on a hill above a town. Why not?

Because while it only takes 10 seconds to engage the braking system, it takes between 15 minutes to an hour to disengage the system when the train is restarted the next day. And in the rail industry, time is money.

So, in order to save that time, the company simply chooses not to engage the automatic brakes. 

The Globe and Mail first reported this situation in March of this year. They asked the Canadian regulatory agency how this could be possible and the response echoes what Stevens made clear: 

Asked why the railway was able to issue such an instruction to its staff, Transport Canada told The Globe that its role is “to monitor railway companies for compliance with rules, regulations and standards through audits and safety inspections.” However, the department added, “Transport Canada does not approve or enforce company instructions.”

What Have We Learned From the Lac-Megantic Oil Train Disaster? https://t.co/2zMOijE0DQ #cdnpoli #oilbyrail

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) December 23, 2016

“The Government is Kneeling in Front of the Oil and Rail Companies”

At the conference I attended earlier this month, people from Lac-Megantic were there to share their stories and comment on topics raised throughout the day.

One woman said the problem was that “the government is kneeling in front of the oil and rail companies.” Several commenters said the government was “in cahoots” with the railroads. Another said that by failing to hold the rail companies accountable and putting the blame solely on Thomas Harding that apparently “the government thinks we are idiots.” 

Their anger and frustration is not hard to understand. Not only is downtown Lac-Megantic still a large expanse of vacant land three and a half years after the accident, but the government has been non-responsive to their requests and has chosen not to conduct a public inquiry of the accident. 

Throughout the day’s discussion it was repeatedly stressed that a public inquiry should take place. But the government has so far denied the residents of Lac-Megantic this opportunity. A public inquiry would allow for people to be called as witnesses and to be questioned publicly. This would mean the CEO of Montreal Maine and Atlantic Railway would likely have to explain to the residents of Lac-Megantic why it was company policy not to set the automatic brake system that might have avoided the deaths and devastation. 

Lessons Learned? Nothing Has Changed

Very little has changed with oil-by-rail operations since Lac-Megantic. The trains are still pulling hundreds of thousands of inadequate tank cars each year, filled with highly volatile Bakken crude oil. The last oil train that derailed, in Mosier, Oregon, exploded and burned just like the many before it. 

We know the railroads are fighting modern braking systems that would have prevented an accident like Lac-Megantic. We know the American Petroleum Institute will fight any regulations to address the volatility of the oil. We know that even the newer CPC-1232 tank cars are inadequate, and the industry is fighting required upgrades.

There are no regulations on how long the trains carrying this volatile cargo can be. And evidence shows the weight of the trains is likely increasing instances of derailment. 

So what are the lessons that have been learned since Lac-Megantic?

The biggest lesson is that, on both sides of the U.S.-Canada border, “Nothing has changed. The railway barons are still there. And stronger than ever,” according to Stevens.

Main Image Credit: Claude Grenier, Studio Numéra, Lac-Mégantic.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

When a CN train carrying crude oil derailed and caught fire last weekend near Gogama, Ontario, it became the fifth loaded oil train to leave the tracks in North America in the past two months — and it's raising new questions about the volatility of diluted bitumen from Alberta's oilsands.

In the March 7th accident, several cars slid into the Mattagami River and ignited, leading local officials to issue a drinking water warning for the Mattagami First Nation.

The accident comes less than a month after another CN tanker train carrying crude derailed in the same region, about 200 kilometres north of Sudbury, spilling an estimated more than one million litres of diluted bitumen into local waterways. Twenty-nine cars left the tracks, causing an explosion that left fires burning for six days.

Officials are still scrambling to clean up the oil, which has spilled into a nearby creek, pond and section of Kasasway Lake, before spring thaw.

Gogama Village Inn owner Roxanne Veronneau told the Toronto Star, “People here are on pins and needles. The tracks run right through town … I’m sure that there’s going to be a lot of talk afterward that this shouldn’t be in the middle of our town.”

“It’s frightening and nerve-wracking, especially after what happened in Quebec.” 

The recent accident near Gogama is the third CN Rail derailment in Ontario in the last month and the fifth tanker train derailment continent-wide.

CN Rail experienced another tanker train derailment on March 5 near Horneypayne, Ontario. No oil spilled as a result of the derailment.

On February 16, a tanker train carrying fracked shale oil from North Dakota derailed in West Virginia, causing a spectacular explosion and forcing the evacuation of two towns. At least one of the derailed cars fell into the Kanawha River, a source of drinking water for two counties.

On March 6 a BNSF train carrying Bakken crude oil derailed south of Galena, Illinois. Twenty-one cars left the tracks and five cars ignited causing a large fireball and plumes of black smoke. Emergency responders spent three days working to bring that fire under control.

Growing Concern Over Volatility of Diluted Bitumen

The spate of recent tanker train explosions in Canada has raised concerns about the volatility of diluted bitumen, which contains highly flammable light hydrocarbons. Although the explosive qualities of Bakken oil — which was central to the tanker train disaster in Lac-Mégantic that left 47 dead — is well-documented, similar attention has not been paid to diluted bitumen, as DeSmogBlog recently reported.

As Railway Age reports, “before CN’s first Gogama wreck Feb. 14, there was a widespread and comforting belief among railroaders, regulators and, yes, even railroad reporters, that tar sands bitumen was much safer for transport by rail than light or conventional crude oils.”

“We now know, thanks to Gogama 1 and Gogama 2, that neither dilbit nor synbit, the synthetically diluted variant of tar sands oil, are safer than untreated Bakken crude.”

The hazardousness of crude oil blends is determined by its ignitability, which is determined by the blend’s most volatile component, Railway Age reports. Thus for diluted bitumen, the volatility of light hydrocarbons used as diluents is a critical factor in determining how fuel will respond in a tanker car accident.

Oil Change International recently calculated an average of 100,000 to 150,000 barrels of dilbit is loaded onto tanker trains at Alberta terminals each day.

“As it takes on average around nine days for a train to reach its destination, this means that at any given time there are between 18 and 27 trains carrying dilbit through the continent loaded with some 900,000 to 1.4 million barrels of dilbit,” Oil Change International’s Andy Rowell reports.

“Together with the roughly one million barrels per day of light, tight crude oil loaded in the Bakken and elsewhere around the continent the threat is enormous.”

Lessons Learned in Lac-Mégantic Not Enough

After the disaster in Lac-Mégantic, Transport Canada ordered all Class 111 tanker cars be upgraded to new standards. The new CPC-1232 standards required cars to be enhanced with half-head shields, fitting protections and normalized steel.

The enhanced cars were meant to prevent another accident like Lac-Mégantic from occurring.

However, as the Toronto Star reported, the Transportation Safety Board’s investigation into the first derailment near Gogama showed the new CPC-1232 cars “performed similarly to those involved in the Lac-Mégantic accident.”

The cars exploded upon impact even though they were travelling at nearly half the speed of the cars involved in the Lac-Mégantic incident.

“The TSB has warned (Transport Canada) that this standard was not sufficient and that more needed to be done to provide an adequate level of protection,” the board’s investigation update states.

“Preliminary assessment of the CPC-1232-compliant tank cars involved in (the first Gogama derailment) demonstrates the inadequacy of this standard given the tank cars' similar performance to the legacy Class 111 tanks cars involved in the Lac-Mégantic accident.”

Greenpeace climate and energy campaigner Keith Stewart told the Toronto Star he’s worried more deaths will occur before the federal government revisits the tanker standards.

“The safety authorities have been warning that even the newer cars are not safe, and we have to wonder where the federal government is in this,” he said.

Image Credit: Transportation Safety Board of Canada

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This article originally appeared on the Vancouver Observer.

Industry Minister James Moore who represents the Port Moody-Westwood-Port Coquitlam riding engaged in blatantly false fear mongering last week. He threatened a Lac Mégantic disaster if we don’t accept Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain pipeline expansion. In order to springboard from a disgusting reliance on a horrific tragedy to reach his ridiculous conclusion, he had to make stuff up.

These are desperate tactics from someone who as an elected Member of Parliament and Minister of the Crown should know better. He said, “The people of Lac Mégantic wished they had pipelines instead of rail.” If Mr. Moore and his Tory government colleagues had done their job, Lac Mégantic would not have happened. 

Instead of acting responsibly, Mr. Moore follows up his toxic logic with a distasteful chaser. “It’s very dangerous for the Lower Mainland … to have the massive spike in rail transfer of dangerous goods,” he said. Moore is reported to have pointed to the huge rail yard in the heart of Port Coquitlam claiming an increasing number of trains are arriving there carrying diluted bitumen crude that has no other way to get to foreign markets.

That’s just not true. There are no facilities on the west coast to transfer crude oil from tank cars to marine shipping vessels. CP spokesperson Jeremy Berry confirmed, “CP does not ship oil along its line to Vancouver for export.”

Mark Hallman, CN’s director of communications and public affairs explained by email that, “CN has never transported crude oil or diluted bitumen to any British Columbia port or terminal for export via ocean-going vessel, and has no plans to do so.”

As for the so-called “massive spike in rail transfer of dangerous goods” there is neither a massive transfer nor a spike. Transport Canada figures of about 5,000 barrels a day relied on by Mr. Moore date back to 2013. CP confirms that, “2014 numbers are lower than 2013.” It is interesting that Mr. Moore would not use recent figures—maybe because they don’t support his false narrative.

Both the Vancouver Sun and Financial Post printed the grossly misleading story (same article different title). 

Mr. Moore is quoted as following up his falsehood about a massive spike in rail transfer with “The people of Port Coquitlam and Burnaby and New Westminster, with dangerous goods going on those rail lines, should be concerned about that.”

If Mr. Moore is concerned about rail transport, he should do everything he can to stop crude transport until its safe, not blackmail Canadians with incineration if we don’t accept pipeline projects.

The truth is it is the Harper government’s unrelenting willingness to cheerlead on behalf of Alberta’s tar sands that is putting us at risk and failing the Canadian economy—including the economic health of our fossil fuel industry.

The Chevron refinery in Burnaby imports a small amount of crude by rail. Chevron began rail-to-truck-to-refinery deliveries in May 2012 and rail-to-refinery deliveries in April 2013 because Chevron couldn’t get enough space on the existing Trans Mountain pipeline—exports took priority over domestic needs.

Crowding out domestic demand is why the relatively small volumes of crude by rail to B.C. have increased since 2011, not because diluted bitumen is seeking foreign markets. But even if Chevron could export all the crude oil it can now receive by rail, it would take more than two months for them to fill an oil tanker. Mr. Moore’s “heavy oil exports to foreign markets” spin doesn’t even make business sense.

Our safety is not threatened by rail transport of heavy oil. Our safety is threatened by the Federal Government’s de-regulation of transport safety. Since 2010 marine safety budgets have been slashed 28 per cent and rail and aviation by more than 20 per cent. Had Transport Canada done its job regulating the rail industry Lac Mégantic would not have happened. 

Our safety is also threatened by the Harper government’s unwillingness to ensure Canadian energy self sufficiency. The oil transported to Lac Mégantic on that fateful night in July 2013 was Bakken crude—a highly flammable light oil imported from New Town, North Dakota destined for the Irving refinery in New Brunswick. More than 40 per cent of the crude oil used in eastern Canada is imported. The public policy answer is to ensure more bitumen is upgraded in Alberta—what Harper promised would happen in 2008 before foreign multinational interests made him change his mind—not build more pipelines.

Oil sands bitumen is dense like tar or wet cement. It requires imported condensate as diluent to move it through a pipeline. If more bitumen were upgraded in Alberta instead of transported as diluted bitumen for upgrading in other countries we would have plenty of pipeline space. 

Barrel for barrel, diluted bitumen requires twice as much pipeline capacity as upgraded bitumen. You need dedicated condensate import pipelines, like Enbridge’s Southern Lights and Kinder Morgan’s Cochin, to bring condensate in, and then you need 30 per cent of the heavy oil pipeline export capacity to re-export condensate as diluent in bitumen. What’s more, diluted bitumen moves 20 per cent slower than light or synthetic crude oil.

Transporting diluted bitumen, even by pipeline, unnecessarily exposes Canadians to a condensate spill. Condensate becomes airborne when released. It’s highly toxic and causes severe respiratory damage. Rail transport of heavy oil requires little or no condensate because oil in rail cars is stationary—the cars move, not the heavy oil.

Mr. Moore was elected to protect his constituent’s interests, not mislead them with erroneous statements and distastefully false arguments. Instead of busying himself inventing boogie men as a front for big oil he should protect the safety and business interests of Canadians—while he still has time.

Robyn Allan is an economist, former president and CEO of the Insurance Corporation of British Columbia and qualified expert intervenor in the NEB Trans Mountain Expansion Project Hearings.

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“We’re seeing strong growth. We’re seeing some large accounts come back. The future is bright.”

According to the Portland Press Herald, that was the assessment of the future by Ryan Ratledge, the current chief operating officer for Central Maine and Quebec Railway, the railroad that runs through Lac-Megantic, Quebec.

Central Maine and Quebec Railway is the new name of the railroad that was operating the train that caused the oil train disaster in Lac Megantic in July 2013 that resulted in the death of 47 people. As DeSmogBlog reported previously, cost cutting measures by the railroad were directly linked to the cause of the accident. 

After the accident, the railway declared bankruptcy and the assets were purchased by Fortress Investment Group, which currently manages over $66 billion in assets.

The oil trains will start rolling through downtown Lac-Megantic again by 2016. Other “dangerous goods” are already being shipped on the railway.

While many see the tragedy in Lac-Megantic as a dire warning about what happens when the lust for profit goes unregulated with no regard for the environment or safety, for the multi-billion-dollar hedge fund Fortress, it is just another success story. Every crisis is an opportunity. Disaster capitalism works. 

Meanwhile in Lac-Megantic, the future isn’t quite so bright. The oil that spilled there contaminated much of downtown. And while the train tracks have been rebuilt, downtown has not. 

Rebuilt tracks in downtown Lac-Megantic in blast zone. Photo by Justin Mikulka.

The reopening of the Musi-Cafe, where many of the victims of the accident were that night, was announced this month. But the cafe isn’t reopening in the downtown area where it had been located. While the cafe was being built this year in a new commercial strip mall development above the town where businesses have relocated, the cafe’s original location was still a fenced-off work site where contaminated soil was being removed by the truck load.

Musi-Cafe being rebuilt in new location. Photo by Justin Mikulka.

And while the Musi-Cafe is opening, owner Yannick Gagne is still very much impacted by what happened on July 6, 2013. Gagne told the International Business Times that there are still some people who will look away from him when they see him on the street. "I know it's normal, but it puts a lot of pressure … I'm not the devil, I didn't put the train inside the Musi-Café."

He also didn’t put the oil into the Chaudiere River, a beautiful river that flows out of Lac-Megantic and is popular with fisherman. This year, on the one-year anniversary of the accident, the people of Lac Megantic released 5,000 new trout into the lake, but cleaning up oil spills takes more than just putting new fish in the water. 

Steve St-Pierre has been fishing the Chaudiere River his whole life and the river he knew no longer exists.

“No one comes down here anymore, and why would they?” St-Pierre told the Montreal Gazette. “Last year I led tourists on fishing trips all the time and that hasn’t happened yet this year. People still fish the lake but the river is pretty dead.”

100,000 liters of oil contaminated at least 30 kilometers of Chaudiere River. Photo by Justin Mikulka.

As the town recovers, the lawsuits also continue. The deadline for filings in the bankruptcy case is January 15, 2015. The goal was to get $500 million in compensation. So far the expected amount is $200 million.

So the oil trains will be back in Lac-Megantic by 2016 running on the same dangerous route as always. Residents had proposed rerouting the tracks around the town but that would have cost Fortress Investment Group money they weren’t willing to spend.

And there isn’t much hope for a town the size of Lac-Megantic to make this happen when the mayor of Toronto is not having any luck keeping the oil trains out of his major city.

While the U.S. is supposed to release new oil-by-rail regulations as soon as January 15, 2015, it remains to be seen when they will go into effect. And as reviewed on DeSmogBlog earlier this year, the regulations do very little to make the people living in the bomb train blast zones any safer.

There were two critical safety items that would have avoided or greatly reduced the damage in Lac-Megantic, from the train and oil that originated in the U.S.—properly securing the train so it didn’t roll down the hill into town, and not having explosive oil in the tank cars.

In September, the U.S. Federal Railroad Administration announced a Proposed Rule to Prevent Unintended Movement of Trains. Something as simple as making sure trains full of explosive oil have to be secured is still in the proposed rule stage.

That means it will not be part of the new regulations that are supposed to be out on January 15. It also means that lobbyists will be able to schedule private meetings with the regulators at the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs for the next several months to influence any final new regulations on securing trains, just like they did this year when they worked against any new oil-by-rail regulations.

One other safety factor not addressed in the new regulations is the actual oil and how it is more explosive than traditional crude oil.

After the Lac-Megantic disaster tests showed that the oil—which was from the Bakken shale formation in North Dakota—was as explosive as gasoline, something that is not true about most crude oils but that is a characteristic of oil obtained by fracking tight shale formations like the Bakken. And that explained why downtown Lac-Megantic was consumed by explosions and fire.

After the new proposed federal regulations completely failed to address the issue of the Bakken oil’s volatility, there was still hope that North Dakota regulators would require the oil to be stabilized prior to shipment in rail cars.

Those hopes were dashed last month when North Dakota regulators released new “standards” allowing oil significantly more volatile and dangerous than the oil involved in the Lac-Megantic accident.

So when the oil trains return to Lac-Megantic in 2016, they can still carry the same dangerous oil they did in 2013—in the same unsafe rail cars. No executives of any rail or oil corporation will have been charged with any wrongdoing.

Just as BP is currently promoting that it’s “back to work in the Gulf of Mexico”, the future is indeed bright for the oil and rail companies who will be running oil trains through Lac-Megantic.

The same can’t be said for the 25 million people who, like the people of Lac-Megantic, continue to live in the blast zones of the bomb trains.

Photo credits: Justin Mikulka.

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This article is re-published with permission from mikedesouza.com

As some of you may know, I’ll be starting a new role in January 2015 as an investigative resources correspondent for Reuters.

Getting access to records about government decisions and policies has long played a key role in the work of many journalists around the world. It will also be a key element for me in the weeks, months and years to come.

So to end off 2014, here are a few examples of some of my recent experiences with government efforts to either release or hide information.

Canada’s information watchdog has noted that the Supreme Court of Canada recognizes access to information as a quasi-constitutional right of all Canadians.

Obtaining access to information is an extension of freedom of expression since it allows the population to be informed and speak about government policies and decisions on how these governments spend public money.

Deleted records at the Canada Revenue Agency

The Canada Revenue Agency took more than a day to answer some basic questions about its decision to delete some instant messaging records of its employees.

You can find my report on this case over here in the Toronto Star.

The CRA declined to answer some of my questions directly, including whether it had verified whether any of the information deleted was of “business value.” By law, all Canadian government organizations are required to preserve records of “business value.”

When I asked some simple follow up questions – including whether any of its senior officials or media officers ever communicate with the minister or with Conservative political staffers in her office using text messages – the CRA called to complain that it wasn’t reasonable for me to ask these questions and expect them to respond within a couple of hours.

The Canada Revenue Agency instructs bureaucrats to delete logs and disable future logging of instant messages of its employees.

More than a week after I first asked questions and requested an interview with its commissioner, the CRA confirmed it was logging Internet activity of its employees – including on their mobile devices – in case it needed this information to review potential cases of misconduct, but that it wasn’t logging their text messages. Why does it keep one set of logs and not the other?

The CRA declined to answer this question.

You can find some of the emails detailing the CRA instructions to delete records of instant messages over here.

Foreign Affairs: This reporter’s question is “undeserving of a response”

Last summer, Canada’s Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development wasn’t providing a lot of information about its relationship with the American Legislative Exchange Council. The council, also known as ALEC, is a secretive organization. It benefits from charitable status based on its mandate to “educate” U.S. state legislators by connecting them with corporations to draft model pieces of legislation.

A series of high-tech firms including Google left ALEC in recent months because it continued to host discussions of people without scientific credentials that cast doubt about peer-reviewed research showing the link between human activity and climate change.

“I will suggest we decline the two requested interviews.” – John Babcock, spokesman for Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development.

Canadian diplomats have had some exchanges with members of ALEC as part of the federal government’s efforts to promote the oilsands and TransCanada’s Keystone XL pipeline. But senior diplomats declined to grant interviews, which led me to write a series of detailed questions to the department in writing.

The department sent me some general and vague statements about who Canadian diplomats were meeting and what they were discussing.

In response to questions asking for details about diplomatic discussions with lobbyists on energy issues, a Canadian government spokesman recommended evasive answers before getting feedback from diplomats about whether they had the answers. This spokesman told his colleagues in internal e-mails that he believed I was “attempting to make specious connections.” He also said one of my questions was “undeserving of a response.”

He also suggested declining the interview requests, without even knowing the answers to the questions raised.

One Canadian diplomat also sent an e-mail to other officials in the department asking them to tell the journalist that she was “not available” for an interview.

You can find these internal e-mails here.

Transport Canada’s vacant rail safety positions

Over a span of several weeks, Transport Canada declined to answer a series of basic questions about critical positions that are vacant in its rail safety and dangerous goods divisions – vacancies that appear to date back to at least 2009.

It confirmed it had vacant oversight and inspector positions within its dangerous goods and rail safety divisions but it declined to identify them or even confirm whether it knew exactly how many of these positions were vacant.

After Reuters reported on internal records detailing these vacancies, the federal New Democrats attempted to raise the issue in Parliament.

In response to questions from NDP deputy leader Megan Leslie in the House of Commons, the parliamentary secretary to the transport minister, Jeff Watson, said that Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government wouldn’t apologize for cutting “waste.”

“We make no apologies for reducing back office expenses while putting the resources where they belong on front-line safety,” Watson said.

The government declined to share details of what it had cut until it was forced to answer these questions through Canada’s Access to Information Act, which requires it to release public records upon request within 30 days to any Canadian who pays the $5 fee.

The records, received about 40 days after the request, confirm what Reuters had reported about vacant engineering and oversight positions. It also revealed these surprising details:

– All six senior positions in the Transportation of Dangerous Goods secretariat, including the manager, are vacant

– Five out of seven positions for scientists who review emergency response plans of companies transporting dangerous cargo are vacant at Transport Canada’s headquarters.

– Five out of seven positions at the headquarters are vacant for dangerous goods inspectors under chief enforcement

– Five out of 15 positions responsible for risk evaluation are vacant, including the chief of risk evaluation, and two accident analysts.

Liberal transportation critic David McGuinty said in an interview that the department appeared to be hiding information.

“Instead of coming clean and saying, we have a capacity problem right now, they won't do it,” said McGuinty in an interview. “They’ve got some explaining to do.”

You can find these records and the information that Transport Canada previously declined to release over here.

Or scroll down below to see the e-mail records from both Foreign Affairs; the charts of vacant and filled Transport Canada positions; and the e-mails from the CRA sending instructions from the office of the agency’s commissioner and chief executive officer for the deletion of internal records.

In terms of transparency, a public servant — who tipped me off about one of these stories — told me that all ministers in the Canadian government are transparent … because you can look right through them and see the prime minister’s office in the background.

Photo: Light Brigading via Flickr

CRA Delete Request by mikedesouza

DFATD underserving by mikedesouza

Dangerous Goods Chart Transport Canada by mikedesouza

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

A fiery CN train derailment in rural Saskatchewan has many people asking what could have happened if the accident occurred in a more populated area.

The 100-car freight train derailed Tuesday about 190 kilometres east of Saskatoon. Twenty-six cars left the track, including six carrying dangerous goods. Two cars containing petroleum distillate caught fire, sending 30-metre flames into the air. Several explosions were also confirmed.

The area around Clair, Sask., was evacuated overnight. Families were allowed to return to their homes Wednesday morning according to Harold Narfason, chief of the Wadena & District Fire Department.

The volunteer fire department was the first on the scene.

Narfason told DeSmog Canada his department has long been aware that dangerous commodities are being shipped by rail through the area.

“I’ve attended numerous meetings with CN to get informed and there are more cars moving through,” Narfason said.

On the scene of the derailment, his team quickly accessed the hazmat sheets, which indicated they were dealing with the explosive petroleum distillate.

“Everything is going as good as it can under the circumstances,” Narfason said.  

The railway industry has been in the spotlight since July 2013 when 47 people died after an oil train derailed and exploded in downtown Lac-Megantic, Que.

In August, the Transportation Safety Board issued a report into the Lac-Megantic tragedy that called for improved safety measures and cited inadequate oversight by Transport Canada.

Overall shipments of oil by rail in Canada have increased by 28,000 per cent since 2009.

The surge in rail transport of petroleum products has outpaced regulatory oversight, according to the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.

In an October 2013 report, CCPA executive director Bruce Campbell, wrote, “In my view, the evidence points to a fundamentally flawed regulatory system, cost-cutting corporate behaviour that jeopardized public safety and the environment, and responsibility extending to the highest levels of corporate management and government policy making.”

Adam Scott, a spokesman for the advocacy group Environmental Defence, told the Canadian Press that an accident like the one in Saskatchewan could have happened anywhere in Canada.

“The freight rail lines actually go right through the centre of almost every major urban centre in the entire country … so the risk of accidents is significant,” Scott said.

Scott said rail companies in Canada are not required to publicly disclose the types of hazardous materials being transported on trains.

ForestEthics has set up a ‘blast zone’ website, which allows users to search by address for oil train routes in Canada and the U.S.

A quick look at the blast zone map indicates CN ought to be counting its lucky stars this latest derailment happened in a town of 50 people instead of a city of 500,000.

Photo: Wadena News

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