More Bakken Crude Will Flow to Linden on Rails, Hudson River

This is the first of a two-part blog about fracking and NJ.

Just because there isn't any fracking in New Jersey doesn't mean we aren't in the game.

Highly volatile Bakken shale crude from North Dakota is railed to Albany, where it is then railed or barged to the Bayway Refinery in Linden. There are plans to expand this "virtual pipeline" at the facilities at both ends of the Hudson River.

Raritan Bay – Linden, NJ

Phillips 66's Bayway refinery is located on the Arthur Kill, a ten-mile tidal straight that connects Newark Bay with Raritan Bay. The facility has a capacity of 238,000 barrels-per-day. It has been receiving as much as 100,000 barrels-per-day of crude, by rail from the Bakken fields in North Dakota, and by barge from the Eagle Ford fields in Texas (the top two continuous oil reservoirs in the US).

Phillips is building a new rail offloading facility that will increase tanker shipments by 75,000 barrels-per-day by the second half of this year, for at least five years. This amount is an average of one unit tanker train per day, and will be located in the “Conrail Shared Assets Area”, used by CSX Transportation and Norfolk Southern Railway.

A DOT-111 tanker has a maximum capacity of 34,500 gallons; one barrel of crude oil contains 42 gallons; so a train hauling 75,000 barrels is more than 90 tank cars long. Since the DOT-111 is just under 60 feet long, each of these new tanker trains will be at least a mile long.

Hudson River – Albany, NY

Since 2012, the Port of Albany has become a major shipping point for Bakken crude, where it is stored in tank farms and then transferred to barges and trains headed for refineries downriver. It is common for hundreds of tankers to stretch for miles along highways and through neighborhoods. On December 20, 2012, the oil tanker Stena Primorsk, carrying almost 12 million gallons of Bakken crude - the first of these shipments from Albany – grounded on the Hudson River near Bethlehem, NY. “Thank God there's no spill,” said Richard Hendrick, general manager of the Port of Albany.

Currently, two companies at the Port of Albany are permitted to ship up to 2.8 billion gallons of oil a year down the Hudson River. In November 2012, Global Partners, a Massachusetts shipper, obtained a permit from the New York Department of Environmental Conservation to expand their operations in Albany. They will increase their processing capacity from 450 million gallons per year of gasoline, ethanol and oil, to 1.8 billion gallons of crude oil.

Just last week, environmental groups and city officials met with the NYDEC in a packed room and demanded a full environmental impact study for the November 2012 permit, as well as for a recent proposal by Global to install seven boilers to heat rail cars so that the crude will be easier to transfer to barges. One of the headlines after this fired-up meeting predicted “Battle Over Oil Trains Begins, Perhaps, with a Crowded Meeting”. Within a few days a petition to Governor Cuomo was posted online to “Stop Tar Sands Oil from Shipping on the Hudson River”.

Why is a permit issued in 2012 being opposed now?

Lessons learned. Bakken crude is lighter and more volatile than most crude - and can explode during accidents – but it isn't consistently labeled as flammable, rather than combustible, when it is transported. And most rail cars hauling fracking crude are DOT-111’s. Because of design flaws, they tend to rupture during accidents, and have picked up the nickname “Bomb Trains.”

Rail Tanker Accidents Are Now Commonly Reported Since the Lac Megantic Disaster in 2013

On July 6, 2013, a series of tragic errors came together and an unattended, 73-car tank train of Bakken crude rolled downgrade into the center of Lac Megantic, Quebec, northwest of the Maine border. The explosion and fire killed forty seven people. Thousands were evacuated and half the downtown area was destroyed. An estimated 1.6 million gallons of crude were spilled. Parts of the town that are still there may not be decontaminated for five years. The carrier, the Montreal, Maine and Atlantic Railway Ltd., has filed for bankruptcy.

A few months later, oil train explosions in Aliceville, Alabama and Casselton, North Dakota finally led to a federal investigation in the US of the crude's lower flashpoint, its tendency to ignite, and the adequacy of the DOT-111s for transporting it.

Because of accidents like these, Governor Cuomo directed a review of New York's spill and and inspection programs related to the transport of crude oil on January 29, 2014. The agencies will report their findings on April 30.

Pennsylvania recently had two rail accidents within a few weeks. On January 20, 2014, a train carrying crude derailed and almost went over a bridge in a densely populated area by the Schuylkill River in West Philadelphia. On February 13, twenty one cars of a 120-car train headed for Morrisville, Pennsylvania jumped the track and spilled thousands of gallons of heavy crude by the town of Vandergrift near Pittsburgh. This is the state's largest crude oil spill since 2000.

Rail accidents in the US have increased as crude oil shipments have increased, from 10,840 carloads in 2009, to a projected 400,000 in 2013. Since 2008, train derailments in North America have spilled more than 3 million gallons of oil. Kate Hudson, of the Hudson River Riverkeeper, reflected on how public opposition is coalescing as more communities become aware of all the new flammable crude being railed through their neighborhoods. “I haven't seen anything like this,” she said. “This is more grassroots than even the fracking fight.”

The second of a two-part blog about fracking and NJ is at http://middletown-nj.patch.com/blogs/bill-simmonss-blog.