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 Re-routing the crude-by-rail trains that support booming North
American oil production would be hugely difficult given the location
of major rail lines and lack of alternatives, industry watchers say,
adding that skirting major centers carries different types of risks.
"In the U.S., rail built the West. Literally. The railroad came
first, and then towns sprung up along the route. And so as a
consequence, rail transit's the heart of many of our cities and
towns," said Brigham McCown, a former chief counsel at the U.S.
Department of Transportation and former head of the Pipeline and
Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA).
"It's called the main line for a reason," he added.
The dangers of sending crude by rail due to increasingly clogged
pipelines were highlighted last July, when an unmanned, runaway
train carrying crude crashed into Lac-Megantic, Quebec, leveling the
heart of the small lakeside community and killing 47 people.
Last week, the U.S. and Canadian transportation safety boards, which
can only suggest and not impose new rules, recommended more rigorous
route planning for shipping crude and other flammable liquids.
The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), which urged
that such shipments avoid populated areas, wants crude oil be added
to a list of hazardous materials that already requires tougher
routing protocols.
"We're not asking for new rails to be built, we're not asking for
major modifications," NTSB board member Robert Sumwalt told Reuters.
The thrust of the proposals is risk mitigation, not complete
elimination, said Jason Kuehn, vice president for rail practice at
management consulting firm Oliver Wyman, which makes route planning
software used by Canadian Pacific Railway Ltd and CSX Corp.
Kuehn said existing routing regulations in the United States, which
govern products such as anhydrous ammonia and chlorine gas, which
are even more dangerous than crude oil, have been effective.
FEW ALTERNATIVES IN THE BAKKEN REGION
The Bakken oil fields of North Dakota pump out a type of crude that
is more explosive and flammable than some others. It was involved at
Lac-Megantic and in other major crashes last year.
But for Bakken oil headed to refineries in the east, alternative
train routes are limited.
The most direct route eastward for Canadian Pacific and BNSF Railway
Co, the two main railroads running through the Bakken region, is
through Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota, then Chicago.
"Getting oil from North Dakota to the refineries around Philly
without going through Chicago, for one, is enormously difficult,"
said Trains magazine writer Fred Frailey, who has followed the
industry for more than three decades.
An alternative route for CP Rail, Canada's second largest railroad,
would require going north to Winnipeg, Manitoba, across Northern
Ontario, southeast to Toronto and likely to Montreal before heading
south to the United States. It's a route that would swap Chicago for
three of Canada's largest cities.
CSX, which expects to ramp up U.S. crude shipments by 50 percent
this year, mostly to East Coast refineries, said it already complies
with federal routing guidelines for shipping the most hazardous
materials.
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"We will evaluate whether those protocols could be applied to oil
shipments," spokeswoman Melanie Cost said in an email.
"However, re-routing requires careful thought and analysis to make
sure that hazardous materials operate over tracks that incorporate
the most safety features, and that additional miles that may involve
other risks are not added to shipments."
Doniele Carlson, spokeswoman for Kansas City Southern, the smallest
of U.S. Class I railroads, noted its network's size limits routing
options.
Some companies have rail lines that bypass city centers, traveling
through the outskirts, but those tracks may not necessarily be
equipped to handle a high-capacity load or trains traveling at
higher speeds, industry experts said.
A crash in a less populated area might wreak less havoc, but
emergency responders could take longer to reach a more remote site
and may be less equipped to deal with it, they said.
Taking a circuitous route, or traveling on secondary tracks, will
also mean a shipment of crude spends more time traveling longer
distances, using more fuel, producing higher emissions, and costing
more to ship.
"If you're doubling the length that it takes to get from point A to
B, you are potentially doubling the risk for an accident," said
transportation safety expert McCown.
The American Railroad Association and the Railway Association of
Canada have said they support the recommendations to improve rail
safety, but they declined to comment specifically about route
planning. They point to an improving safety record.
The rate of main-track accidents has declined over the past 10 years
in Canada and the United States, according to the most recent
government data. In Canada, accidents fell 33 percent to 1.6 per
million main-track train-miles in 2012, from 2.4 in 2011. In the
United States, the main line accident rate fell some 20 percent to
0.8 in 2012, from 1.0 in 2011.
Canada had 2.6 accidents per million main-track train-miles in 2003.
The United States had 1.5 in 2003.
But shipping companies are just as involved as the railways in
deciding what cargoes are moved and how, and under
government-mandated common carrier regulations, North American
railroads are legally required to transport products they might
otherwise choose to avoid.
"They've taken on an inordinate amount of the risk. Even though it's
not their car, and it's not their product, and it might not have
been loaded by them," said Tony Hatch, independent transportation
analyst at ABH Consulting.
"They don't want to be on the front page of the paper unless it's
for opening a new terminal or cutting a ribbon."
(Additional reporting by Kristen Hays in
Houston; editing by Jeffrey Hodgson and Peter Galloway)
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