BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — U.S. transportation officials
rebuked the oil industry Friday for not giving up information regulators
say they need to gauge the danger of moving crude by rail, after
several accidents highlighted the explosive properties of fuel from the
booming oil shale fields on the Northern Plains.
Department of
Transportation officials told The Associated Press they have received
only limited data on the characteristics of oil from the Bakken region
of North Dakota and Montana despite requests lodged by Secretary Anthony
Foxx more than two months ago.
"The overall and ongoing lack of
cooperation is disappointing, slows progress and certainly raises
concerns," the agency said in a statement. "We still lack data we
requested and that energy stakeholders agreed to produce within 30
days."
The DOT said "a handful of individual companies" have offered the information being sought but
would not provide specifics.
Representatives from the American Petroleum Institute refuted the foot-dragging accusation.
"We’d like to know what information they’re not getting so we can give it to them," said API
spokesman Eric Wohlschlegel.
API
president Jack Gerard said oil companies have been encouraged by the
group to share what they know. He said there’s more data to come, but
added that API does not serve as an industry "library" so it would come
from multiple sources.
There have been at least four major
accidents involving trains carrying crude from the Bakken since
production began to boom in 2008. Among them was a derailment last July
that killed 47 people and torched a large section of downtown
Lac-Megantic, Quebec.
The combustibility of the crude in Lac-Megantic was comparable to gasoline, according to Canadian
investigators.
Other accidents with explosions have occurred after derailments of oil trains in Alabama, North Dakota
and Oklahoma.
The
string of accidents led regulators to warn emergency responders and the
public in January that Bakken oil — a light, sweet crude that has high
amounts of natural gases and other volatile compounds — could be more
dangerous than many conventional crudes.
Some crudes from elsewhere in North America and around the globe share similar volatile properties.
But
the Bakken fuel is the first to be moved in North America in modern
times in such massive quantities by rail. That’s exposed a new set of
safety concerns, including a well-known defect in tens of thousands of
rail cars that leads them to rupture in accidents.
Mile-long oil
trains can carry 3 million gallons of crude per shipment. The number of
carloads delivered by major U.S. railroads has surged astronomically:
from 9,344 delivered in 2008 to 434,000 carloads last year. The
shipments are delivered to refineries across the U.S. and Canada,
including in the Pacific Northwest, California, and the East and Gulf
Coasts.
Unlike most hazardous materials produced by chemical
plants or other manufacturing sources, crude oil is not refined before
being loaded onto trains. As a result, its properties can vary greatly
among shipments. Three companies were hit with proposed penalties
totaling $93,000 in February for misclassifying oil from the Bakken as
less dangerous.
The North Dakota Petroleum Council on Friday
announced it has contracted with an engineering consulting firm to study
Bakken crude oil in an attempt to resolve the federal government’s
concerns.
The council represents more than 500 companies operating
in the Midwest and Rocky Mountains. Spokeswoman Tessa Sandstrom said
oil samples will be collected for study from 18 locations across the
Williston Basin of North Dakota and Montana, which includes the Bakken.
Through
the petroleum institute, the industry also has pledged to work with the
government to come up with new standards for testing the oil to make
sure it’s being handled properly when loaded onto trains.
That process is expected to take several more months, and will be driven in part by what’s learned
regarding volatility.
Cynthia
Quarterman, head of the Transportation Department’s Pipeline and
Hazardous Materials Administration, testified before Congress as
recently as late February that the industry had been working closely and
sharing information with regulators.
But there were signs the
government’s patience was wearing thin in recent weeks. In a March 10
interview with The Associated Press, Quarterman raised the prospect the
government was ready to go it alone if necessary. She said regulators
had collected close to 100 samples of oil, primarily from the Bakken, to
do their own analyses.
"We’re working as hard as we can to get
our arms around what the data we have means. It would be helpful to have
some industry input as well," Quarterman said.
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