{"id":44542,"date":"2019-03-17T06:37:46","date_gmt":"2019-03-17T11:37:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=44542"},"modified":"2019-03-17T06:37:49","modified_gmt":"2019-03-17T11:37:49","slug":"despite-risks-canadas-tar-sands-industry-is-betting-big-on-oil-trains","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=44542","title":{"rendered":"Despite Risks, Canada&#8217;s Tar Sands Industry Is Betting Big on Oil Trains"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"page-title\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.desmogblog.com\/2019\/03\/14\/risks-canada-alberta-tar-sands-oil-trains-accidents\">Despite Risks, Canada&#8217;s Tar Sands Industry Is Betting Big on Oil Trains<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.desmogblog.com\/sites\/beta.desmogblog.com\/files\/styles\/full_width_blog_image\/public\/blogimages\/canadian%20pacific.jpg?itok=1Q5RE3m3\" alt=\"Canadian Pacific train\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Last year, Canada&nbsp;exported&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.eia.gov\/dnav\/pet\/hist\/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&amp;s=MCRIMUSCA1&amp;f=M\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">a record amount of tar sands oil to the U.S<\/a>., despite low oil prices leading to&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.desmogblog.com\/2018\/10\/25\/canadian-tar-sands-oil-financial-losses\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">major losses<\/a>&nbsp;once again for the struggling tar sands industry.&nbsp;That achievement required a big bump in hauling&nbsp;oil by rail, with those daily&nbsp;volumes in late 2018 more than double the previous record in 2014 during&nbsp;the first oil-by-rail&nbsp;boom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Canada&#8217;s&nbsp;oil industry essentially has reached its limit for exporting oil into the&nbsp;U.S.&nbsp;through&nbsp;pipelines. That&#8217;s why it&#8217;s turning to rail to export more and more oil, but as an ever-increasing number of&nbsp;oil trains hit the tracks of North America, expect more accidents and oil spills to&nbsp;follow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure><iframe src=\"https:\/\/www.eia.gov\/opendata\/embed\/iframe.php?series_id=PET.ESM_EPC0_RAIL_NUS-NCA_MBBL.M\"><\/iframe><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>If Canada can open up new pipeline capacity, this scenario may change. However,&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/oilprice.com\/Latest-Energy-News\/World-News\/Enbridge-Delays-Restart-Of-Line-3.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Enbridge recently announced its&nbsp;Line 3 pipeline&nbsp;<\/a>replacement will be delayed until at least the second half of 2020. That means if Canadian tar sands companies&nbsp;want to&nbsp;increase exports, they will have to move that oil by rail. ConocoPhillips chief financial officer Don Wallette, Jr. recently&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/articles\/oil-trains-make-comeback-as-pipeline-bottlenecks-worsen-11548930600\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">confirmed this reliance on oil trains to the Wall Street Journal<\/a>: \u201cThe intention is to bridge us over to the next major pipeline expansion, so a few&nbsp;years.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This could result in a near doubling of the current record volumes of Canadian crude moving by rail. Trains potentially could haul&nbsp;over 600,000 barrels per day (bpd)&nbsp;in the next two years, an outcome I predicted&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.desmogblog.com\/2014\/08\/21\/all-aboard-tar-sands-oil-rail-set-eclipse-pipelines\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">four years ago<\/a>&nbsp;when the Canadian industry was moving only 150,000 bpd of oil by&nbsp;rail.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>To put these volumes in perspective, the Enbridge Line 3 pipeline will have a capacity of 760,000 bpd. Oil trains amount to a veritable pipeline on&nbsp;wheels.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&nbsp;\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Despite Risks, Canada&#8217;s Tar Sands Industry Is Betting Big on Oil Trains Last year, Canada&nbsp;exported&nbsp;a record amount of tar sands oil to the U.S., despite low oil prices leading to&nbsp;major losses&nbsp;once again for the struggling tar sands industry.&nbsp;That achievement required a big bump in hauling&nbsp;oil by rail, with those daily&nbsp;volumes in late 2018 more than [&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":[3,4],"tags":[103,5317,11782,2466,3646],"class_list":["post-44542","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-energy-2","category-environment","tag-canada","tag-desmog-blog","tag-justin-mikulka","tag-oil-by-rail","tag-oil-trains"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44542","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=44542"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44542\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44543,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44542\/revisions\/44543"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=44542"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=44542"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=44542"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}