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.”

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.

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.”

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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.”

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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.

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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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A letter submitted by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to the State Department gives new weight to concerns the proposed $8 billion Keystone XL pipeline, destined to carry crude from the Alberta oilsands to export facilities along the Gulf of Mexico, will have significant climate impacts.

The EPA letter suggests existing analyses – which downplay the importance of greenhouse gas emissions associated with the project – are out of date and require revision in light of low global oil prices.

Due to the plummeting of oil prices and related market changes “it is important to revisit [the] conclusions” of previous reports, EPA told the State Department.

“Given recent large declines in oil prices and the uncertainty of oil price projections, the additional low prices scenario in the (State report) should be given additional weight during decision making, due to the potential implications of lower oil prices on project impacts, especially greenhouse gas emissions.”

The State Department is due to release a revised analysis of the Keystone XL project and is currently gathering comments from the EPA and other agencies.

A recent report in the journal Nature singled out the oilsands as one of the world’s carbon deposits that must remain in the ground if global temperatures are to remain within the 2 degrees Celsius warming limit recommended by policy makers and scientists.  

Construction of the Keystone XL pipeline is dependent on a steady flow of oil from the estimated 160 billion barrels in the oilsands. Yet the drop in prices has recently led to abandoned projects and major cuts to the workforce. Suncor, the oilsands’ largest operator, recently announced it will eliminate 1,000 jobs, Shell Canada will cuts its workforce by 10 per cent and Cenovus Energy confirmed its investment in the area will drop by 25 per cent.

A Republican-led Congress is attempting to force approval of the Keystone XL pipeline with new legislation, although President Barack Obama has been clear about his plan to veto any bills that would allow construction to begin.

In 2013, Obama indicated his final decision on the pipeline will come down to the project’s climate impact, saying “our national interest will be served only if this project does not significantly exacerbate the problem of carbon pollution.”

In its letter to the State Department this week, the EPA said carbon emissions from the pipeline — which has the capacity to carry 830,000 barrels of oil per day — would add up to the equivalent of 5.7 million new passenger vehicles on the road.

“Over the 50-year lifetime of the pipeline, this could translate into releasing as much as 1.37 billion more tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere,” the letter states.

Alberta premier Jim Prentice travelled to Washington, D.C. this week to lobby Congress and the Obama administration to approve the pipeline.

Prentice recently told NPR that Alberta “has the most exacting standards around in terms of carbon emissions, the regulatory framework that surrounds industrial emissions.”

When it comes to the venting and flaring of gasses with high warming potentials like methane, Prentice said, “in all these areas, I think we’re world class.”

Yet the EPA seems to have come to its own conclusion regarding Alberta’s greenhouse gas regulations, stating, “until ongoing efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions associated with the production of oil sands are more successful and widespread…development of oil sands crude represents a significant increase in greenhouse gas emissions.”

Canada currently has no regulation to limit emissions from the oil and gas industry, and recently Prime Minister Stephen Harper said it would be “crazy” to introduce such rules.

The EPA letter notes “oil sands crude has significantly higher lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions than other crudes” and that the use of oilsands crude creates emissions 17 per cent greater than the use of crude refined in the U.S. on a well-to-wheels basis.

Premier Prentice argued Canada will continue to move crude to the U.S. with or without the Keystone XL pipeline, suggesting rail will pick up the slack. In its letter the EPA appears to agree with this point, suggesting oilsands producers would likely stomach the high cost of rail transport.

But the letter goes on to point to the additional risks associated with transporting large quantities of bitumen, which “can have different impacts than spills of conventional oil.” A recent government-commissioned study in Canada acknowledges there are large gaps in existing knowledge when it comes to the effects of bitumen spills.

Concerns over the pipeline route, especially in Nebraska, requires greater spill preparedness and a clear commitment from TransCanada that the company will assume responsibility for any spills and remediation should a release occur. Spills remain “a concern for citizens and businesses relying on groundwater resources crossed by the route,” the EPA letter notes.

Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org, called the letter a “damning report” and said with it, “the president’s got every nail he needs to finally close the coffin on this boondoggle.”

Image Credit: Kris Krug

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Last week I started to explore the possibility that British Columbia could become a 100 per cent renewable energy region, as 140 regions in. Germany are planning to become.

This week, we look at transportation. Is it possible that we could get where we want to be and ship our goods where they need to go without any use of fossil fuels?

Helsinki, capital of Finland, is taking a big step in this direction, with its goal that by 2025, nobody will need to own a car in the city at all, thanks to an advanced integrated ‘mobility on demand’ network of shared bikes, transit, LRT, and computer-automated Kutsuplus minibuses that adapt their routes to take you wherever you want to go.

The cars, trucks, ferries and planes that we use to go about our daily lives are 38 per cent of the cause of global warming in B.C., so this is clearly a big deal. So let’s start at the easy end, and work our way into the difficult, uncharted territory.[view:in_this_series=block_1]

Have You Ever Tried Cycling in North Vancouver?

Cycling is easy: the bustling city of Copenhagen has already demonstrated that 35 per cent of its commuters can get to work by bike, and many cities in Holland can boast equally good numbers.

“Ah, but it’s flat,” you might respond. “Have you ever tried cycling in North Vancouver?”

“Ah,” I respond, “have you ever tried an electric bike?” Electric bikes defy gravity, making hills vanish with a twist of the hand. In so doing they open up new realms of possibility for older cyclists, and anyone who doubts their ability to cycle a 10 km round trip. Add safe protected bike-lanes, off-road bike trails, clearly marked intersections, good bike-sharing schemes with bike-attached tablets that give GPS based-directions, as they are doing in Copenhagen, and you’ve got a set-up in which cycling becomes irresistible.

There’s a cost to all this, of course – but in Holland, which has 35,000 kilometres of bike paths and spends $580m a year on bicycle infrastructure, the cost is 4.3 cents per kilometre pedaled by each cyclist, compared to 22 cents for a motorist. In other words: it is five times cheaper. For shorter distances of 5km or less the bike will also get you there faster than a car. In Copenhagen, they justify the cost of the bike infrastructure by the health care savings: the health benefit of cycling comes to $1 per km, creating an overall annual benefit to the Danes of some $388 million.

But even so—where will the money come from? It could come from existing transportation budgets, by spending less on roads. It could come from an increase in the gas tax. It could come by changing the way we use income from the carbon tax, spending it on positive climate solutions instead of returning it in tax reductions. It could come from a special green bonds issue. Or it could come from road tolls, which make sense in a post-carbon world when gas taxes will no longer exist. 

1,000 Kilometres a Day – in an Electric Bus

Next up is public transit, bus rapid transit and light rail transit. There are cities all over the world with excellent systems, from Portland to New York, Paris to Tokyo, Curitiba to Bogota. Light rail can be fully electric – and so can a regular bus. There are 100 per cent electric buses on the road without overhead cables in Seoul, Montreal, London, Helsinki, Los Angeles, Edmonton, Geneva (using a 15 second flash charge), Adelaide (solar electric), Umea (Sweden), San Francisco—and soon, everywhere. In the U.S., the Proterra electric bus has set a world record, travelling over 1,000 kilometres in a single day, using rapid fast charging during the day.

In China, the auto-manufacturer BDY recently received an order for 1,800 electric buses that can travel300 km on a single charge, with 1,200 going to Dalian in northeast China and 600 to Nanjing in eastern China. With that kind of range, fast luxury electric coaches travelling into Vancouver from Whistler and the Fraser Valley cannot be far away, equipped with tables, coffee and orange juice.

Next, there’s railways. The West Coast Express from Vancouver to Mission could easily be electrified, as railways are in many parts of the world. If you have never travelled on a fast, comfortable train, you don’t know what you’re missing. When I lived in England, I would regularly take the two-hour ride from South Devon to London. The seats were arranged in groups of four around a table, enabling you to spread out, work, and talk to fellow travellers if you wanted to. When I travelled on a high-speed train across South Korea, averaging 300 kph, the journey was so smooth you hardly knew you were travelling. It’s just a matter of commitment, to make the investment.

In the Lower Mainland, there is an existing Fraser Valley Interurban rail line that runs from New Westminster to Langley, Abbotsford and Chilliwack where a light rail train could operate, sharing the track with existing goods use. Maybe the rail line that carries coal to Roberts Bank at Tsawwassen could also share the track, allowing a light rail passenger service to operate there too.

The Electric Car – and Pick Up Truck

So now we come to the big one—the electric car. Among those who observe the scene, there is a sense of welcome inevitability that the future of cars and light trucks will be electric.

Not hydrogen fuel cell, since a fuel cell electric vehicle uses three times more energy than a straight EV.

Maybe not biofuel, since progress on second-generation biofuels grown on marginal land is slow, and most biofuel still has a large carbon footprint, with the exception of recycled biodiesel, as distributed by the Cowichan Biodiesel Co-op and other groups.

And not natural gas, since gas is a non-renewable fossil fuel that increasingly depends on fracking for extraction, polluting the groundwater with unknown chemicals and releasing fugitive methane emissions into the atmosphere.

EV prices are falling, and choices are increasing. EV drivers report a really positive driving experience, and B.C.’s charging infrastructure is spreading. If B.C. was to follow Norway’s example, with a well-organized system of incentives, 10 per cent of all new cars sold could be electric. The question is not ‘if,’ but ‘how soon?’

At today’s fuel-prices, a regular car costs $200 a month to lease and $150 for gasoline, which comes to $11 a day. A Nissan Leaf, offered for lease in America for $199 a month, and costing just $10 a month on electricity, comes to $7 a day. With prices like that, anyone who does not drive a leased EV will be losing $4 a day, or $120 a month.

And if you live out in the back-country, where you really need your rugged pick-up truck? They're coming: Tesla has plans for an EV pick-up truck similar to the Ford F-150, and Via Motors already has one on the assembly line. 

The best policy approach to accelerate the EV revolution is simply to set a high standard for fuel efficiency. In Europe, by 2020, new cars will need to produce no more than 95 grams of CO2 per kilometre, reduced from the current 120 g/km. The same approach could be used to reduce emissions to zero, giving auto-manufacturers time to plan and retool. This is not something B.C. could do on its own, however; it would require federal regulation to make it Canada-wide.

Could B.C. Produce Enough Electricity?

Would there be enough electricity if every car and light truck in B.C. were to be electric? If two million electric vehicles each traveled 15,000 kilometres a year at an average 25 kwh per 100 km, each vehicle would use 3,750 kwh a year, totaling 7,500 GWh, compared to the 60,000 GWh that B.C. consumes every year.

Solar PV on half of B.C.’s south-facing rooftops could produce 7,500 GWh a year; alternatively, since a 3 MW wind turbine can produce 7.5 GWh a year, sufficient for 2,000 cars, a thousand turbines could produce the power for two million electric vehicles. A 30 per cent efficiency improvement on every home could free up the same amount of power.

Given the potential for far more travel by bike and transit, a more realistic calculation might be for one million EVs driving 10,000 kilometres a year, resulting in 2,500 GWh of additional demand, or just 4 per cent of B.C.’s current power usage.

The Car-Sharing Revolution

In 1998, just 905 people belonged to carshare groups around the world. By 2012, that number had increased two thousandfold to 1.78 million. By 2020, carsharing revenues are set to hit $6 billion, with12 million members worldwide.

The real breakthrough, however, comes with peer-to-peer carsharing, when people put their cars into a shared rental pool. It started in San Francisco several years ago, and has spread through outfits such as Getaround, Buzzcar, RelayRides and Communauto in Montreal, with owners earning up to $300 a month. It is only a matter of time before it reaches Vancouver and Victoria.

So picture a 100 per cent per cent narrowed, creating space for trees, food and children’s play. With narrower, slower streets come more neighbourhood friendships, more green space, and an increase in our social and ecological wealth. What’s not to like about this future?

Next week: In Part 3, I will explore the more difficult challenge of achieving 100 per cent renewable energy for long-distance trucking, boats, ferries and planes. In Part 4, I will wrap things up by asking how we might be able to achieve all this.

This series originally appeared on the B.C. Sustainable Energy Association website.

Image Credit: Rush hour on the Dunsmuir separated bike lanes by Paul Krueger via Flickr.

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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On July 6th, 2013, one year ago today, a train carrying oil derailed in the sleepy Quebec town of Lac-Mégantic, resulting in an explosion so wild and so hot it leveled several city blocks and incinerated the bodies of many of its 47 victims. The accident put the tiny town on the international media circuit and dragged a new social concern with it: oil trains.

Whether you call them oil trains, tanker trains or bomb trains, chances are you didn’t call them anything at all before this day last year.

Before the tragedy of Lac-Mégantic, several smaller tanker train accidents across North America had already raised alarm over the danger of transporting oil and other fuels by rail in small communities with tracks often running through city centres and residential areas.

In the wake of Lac-Mégantic, however, critics, environmental organizations, journalists and concerned communities began tracking the growing movement of volatile oil shipments across the continent.

Keeping pace with oil transport

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

In 2012 nearly 40,000 barrels of oil were shipped to the U.S. each day, although surging oil production in the Bakken Shale has simultaneously led to an increase of oil by rail shipments of crude north of the border.

In 2013 oil train accidents resulted in more than 1.15 million gallons of spilled oil. This represents a 50-fold increase over the yearly average between 1975 and 2012.

According to some, the surge in rail transport of petroleum products has outpaced regulatory oversight. Lax oversight may have contributed to the devastation at Lac-Mégantic, according to the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA).

In an October 2013 report, author Bruce Campbell, the CCPA’s executive director, 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.”

According to Transport Safety Board of Canada data, accidents involving dangerous goods have increased since last year.

Screen grab of TSB Canada data complied by CTV News. 

Poor tank design, poorer response plan

According to CN Rail chief executive Claude Monegau, poor tank car design was “one of the most important systematic issues” leading to the tragedy in Lac-Mégantic. Earlier this year a Canadian government-commissioned rail safety group said more needed to be done to ensure the safety of oil tanker cars carrying crude through communities.

Since then the government has implemented a plan to upgrade or retire generic oil tanker cars, known as DOT-111s. In February there were roughly 228,000 DOT-111 cars in operation across North American and 92,000 of those were carrying flammable liquids.

Civil engineering expert and professor Roza Galvez-Cloutier, who examined the derailment in Lac-Mégantic, recently said no appropriate plans or equipment are in place to prevent a similar situation from recurring in Canada.

“There was an evident lack of preparation at all levels,” Galvez-Cloutier said recently in a Science Media Centre of Canada webinar reviewing the events at Lac-Mégantic. “Prevention measures, preparedness and emergency plans need to urgently be updated.”

“I think there was a panic and there was a lack of co-ordination,” she said.

At the time of the incident, firefighters were cooling oil tankers without having subdued the fire, Galvez-Cloutier recounted, adding the emergency response personnel did not know what the composition of the burning oil was.

Had they known, it’s likely they would have responded more appropriately to the fire, she said, using foam suppressants, for example.

“I know that Ultramar brought in, as a last resort, some foam to assist, but this was based on their goodwill, not a pre-planned emergency measure,” she said.

Grassroots groups respond

The increase in oil tanker accidents led a coalition of environmental organizations to create an ‘Oil by Rail Week of Action’ between July 6 and 13.

The coalition includes ForestEthics, Oil Change International, 350.org and the Sierra Club.

On Monday the groups plan to launch a ‘blast zone’ website which will make communities along oil tanker routes searchable by address.

Eddie Scher, spokesperson for ForestEthics, said the website brings together rail industry data and Google maps to make evacuations zones visible.

“It allows you to plug in your address and see where you sit in relation to this Google map blast zone,” Scher told DeSmog by phone.

“And what you find, which isn’t that surprising, is that these trains — mile long trains carrying 3 million gallons of oil — go right through the centre of almost very major city in U.S.”

“Our rail system was designed to carry goods, not carry hazardous materials through city centres,” he said.

Major cities including L.A., Oakland and Chicago have oil trains running through them.

The database, which is searchable for both U.S. and Canadian addresses, is designed to bring information about oil train transport to the public, something Scher says should already be available to the communities along rail transport lines.

“It’s pretty outrageous that we’re the ones to have to do this. We’re happy that emergency responders have this information but everyone should know what’s going on.”

“We’re working on the numbers right now, but it’s easy to say with the information we have that 10 of millions of Americans live in that blast zone,” he said.

“The amount of the populations that is threatened is huge. What we’re really trying to do is to let folks see what is going on.“

Image Credit: Transportation Safety Board via flickr.

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On August 20, 1969, two Penn Central commuter trains collided head-on near Darien, Conn.  Four people were killed and 43 were injured. The crash led the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) to recommend that railroads implement new safety technology called positive train control — a system for monitoring and controlling train movements to increase safety.

The NTSB first recommended positive train control in 1970. In 2008, after another fatal train collision that killed 25 people, Congress finally passed the Rail Safety Improvement Act, which mandated positive train control be implemented by the railroad industry by the end of 2015. 

Fast-forward another six years to multiple congressional hearings in recent months, during which the railroads have informed Congress that positive train control simply won’t be implemented by the end of 2015. It’s been 44 years since the NTSB first recommended positive train control to improve rail safety in the U.S. and it is still not being used. 

Looking at the way the positive train control scenario has played out for the past 44 years offers valuable lessons on how the U.S. is now dealing with safety regulations for shipping oil by rail.

Last week, the NTSB held a two-day forum on rail safety regarding the transportation of crude oil and ethanol. One of the main topics was how to improve rail tank car safety and what to do with the DOT-111 tank cars currently being used to ship crude oil and ethanol.

Much like positive train control, the NTSB has been recommending for decades that the DOT-111 tank cars not be used for ethanol and crude oil transportation due to the high risks they pose in derailments. 

So why hasn’t anything been done? Mostly because of opposition by oil and gas industry groups, such as the American Petroleum Institute (API). The API was a constant presence at last week’s rail safety forum, just as it has been at congressional hearings on rail safety this year. A recent Reuter’s article alluded to the problem:

“Industry sources say compromise has been difficult among stakeholders with different concerns such as costs and whether an overly bulky model might limit cargoes.”

Basically, API is opposed to making changes to the rail tank cars because safety cuts into profits. Even NTSB Chairman Deborah Hersman pointed to the profit motive in an interview with NPR on April 25th. Hersman said, “Absolutely. Follow the money. It all comes back to the money.” 

And the reality is that API’s members don’t have to worry about paying for accidents caused by using these unsafe DOT-111 cars. The current estimate for what it will cost to clean up and rebuild from the oil train accident in Lac-Megantic, Que., is $2.7 billion, which will be paid by Canadian taxpayers, not by oil or rail companies.

During the recent rail safety forum, the NTSB’s Hersman asked Lee Johnson of the American Petroleum Institute: “Given the rates that we heard earlier for production and the needs of your members how long do you think we are going to see DOT-111 tank cars to continue to exist in the fleet and at what rate percentage?”

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