{"id":35645,"date":"2018-06-30T10:46:11","date_gmt":"2018-06-30T15:46:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=35645"},"modified":"2018-06-30T10:46:11","modified_gmt":"2018-06-30T15:46:11","slug":"news-not-to-miss-oil-train-spill-china-petrochemical-deal-methane-leaks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=35645","title":{"rendered":"News Not to Miss: Oil Train Spill, China Petrochemical Deal, Methane Leaks"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3><a href=\"https:\/\/www.desmogblog.com\/2018\/06\/29\/iowa-oil-train-spill-fracking-methane-leaks-china-west-virginia-petrochemical-deal\">News Not to Miss: Oil Train Spill, China Petrochemical Deal, Methane Leaks<\/a><\/h3>\n<p><em>It&#8217;s hard to keep up with the flood of news these days. Here&#8217;s your weekly round-up of news not to miss from\u00a0DeSmog.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Justin Mikulka has been <a href=\"https:\/\/www.desmogblog.com\/oil-rail-following-bomb-trains\">on the oil train beat for years<\/a>. He&#8217;s\u00a0documented how the oil boom and pipeline bottleneck in the Bakken Shale has led to more, longer, and\u00a0heavier trains shuttling oil across North America and how various factors also have\u00a0led to another type of boom: the literal \u201cboom\u201d of exploding oil trains. (In fact, train operators have given them the nickname \u201cbomb\u00a0trains.\u201d)<\/p>\n<p>This week, Mikulka writes about <a href=\"https:\/\/www.desmogblog.com\/2018\/06\/25\/oil-train-derailment-doon-iowa-bnsf-230000-gallons-oil-flooded-river\">the latest oil train incident<\/a>, this time involving a BNSF train carrying tar sands oil from Alberta, Canada, across northwestern Iowa.<\/p>\n<p>While it fortunately resulted in no fire or explosion, the June 22 derailment did\u00a0release\u00a0an estimated 230,000 gallons of oil into a flooded Iowa\u00a0river.<\/p>\n<p>Of particular note is the fact\u00a0that the Iowa oil train crash is the first one involving the\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/ktul.com\/news\/nation-world\/cause-of-iowa-derailment-oil-spill-amount-still-under-wraps\">new, safer\u00a0DOT-117R rail tank cars<\/a>, which were supposed to improve the safety of oil\u00a0trains.<\/p>\n<p><strong>China and West Virginia: A Fracking-to-Plastics Dream in\u00a0Appalachia<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The shale oil and gas industry, fueled by fracking, is helping pump record volumes of production in the U.S. But with all those fossil fuels flooding the market, they have to go\u00a0somewhere.<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s why the state of West Virginia is spearheading an effort to build out a massive petrochemical storage and production hub in the Ohio River Valley. In fact, last November the state signed an $83 billion deal with Chinese investors to make this fracking-to-plastics dream a reality. (For context, West Virginia\u2019s total gross domestic product\u00a0was only $76.8 billion last\u00a0year.)<\/p>\n<p>\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>News Not to Miss: Oil Train Spill, China Petrochemical Deal, Methane Leaks It&#8217;s hard to keep up with the flood of news these days. Here&#8217;s your weekly round-up of news not to miss from\u00a0DeSmog. Justin Mikulka has been on the oil train beat for years. He&#8217;s\u00a0documented how the oil boom and pipeline bottleneck in the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[14353,130,5317,328,331,13615,1523,20743,18150],"class_list":["post-35645","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","tag-ashley-braun","tag-china","tag-desmog-blog","tag-fossil-fuels","tag-fracking","tag-methane-leaks","tag-oil-spill","tag-oil-train-spill","tag-west-virginia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35645","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=35645"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35645\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35646,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35645\/revisions\/35646"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=35645"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=35645"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=35645"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}