Spills and explosions skyrocketing with increase in transport of extreme crudes by rail
For Immediate Release, Thusday, January 21 — Wednesday’s three-car train derailment in Martinez was a frightening near miss that serves as an important reminder about the dangers of oil by rail. Had the derailed train been carrying volatile and toxic grades of oil such as Canadian tar sands or Bakken crude — both of which are regularly brought through Bay Area communities to local refineries by rail — we might have been dealing with a deadly explosion, oil spilled into waterways and groundwater aquifers, and poison gases released into the air.
Ratha Lai of the Sierra Club’s San Francisco Bay Chapter said: “Every Bay Area resident needs to contact their local representatives and make sure they take a stand against extreme crude by rail. Decisions with mammoth impacts for public health and the climate are being played out at the local level. The recent defeat of the WesPac oil terminal proposal shows that community pressure can succeed in stopping Big Oil's attempts to gamble with our health and safety.”
As the world runs out of accessible crude extracted through “conventional” methods, the oil industry is turning to highly polluting “extreme” crudes like Bakken shale oil and Canadian tar sands. The Bay Area’s refineries are scrambling to make the upgrades to their facilities that will allow them to bring in as much of this extreme crude oil as possible. Two such projects are reaching a head in the coming month: on February 4th, the San Luis Obispo Planning Commission will host a public hearing on the Phillips 66 oil train project, and on February 8th the Benicia Planning Commission will host a public hearing on the Valero Benicia crude-by-rail project.
With a 40-fold increase in the amount of oil being shipped by rail since 2008, derailments and spills have been on a steep rise. Bakken shale oil is among the most volatile and combustible oil on earth. Tar sands oil, meanwhile, is diluted with highly flammable solvents for transport.
Another factor in oil-train derailments is rail instability caused by coal dust on the tracks. When wet, the coal can act as a lubricant on the rails. Coal is currently brought to the Levin-Richmond Terminal in open-top rail cars, and Oakland is battling a proposal to export millions of tons of coal through a new terminal on the former Army Base.
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