{"id":6374,"date":"2015-03-10T06:10:02","date_gmt":"2015-03-10T11:10:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=6374"},"modified":"2015-03-10T06:10:02","modified_gmt":"2015-03-10T11:10:02","slug":"tar-sands-by-rail-disasters-the-latest-wave-in-the-bomb-train-assault","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=6374","title":{"rendered":"Tar Sands by Rail Disasters: The Latest Wave in the Bomb Train Assault"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3><a href=\"http:\/\/www.desmogblog.com\/2015\/03\/09\/tar-sands-rail-disasters-latest-wave-bomb-train-assault\" target=\"_blank\">Tar Sands by Rail Disasters: The Latest Wave in the Bomb Train Assault<\/a><\/h3>\n<p>With the first crash and explosion of a<a href=\"http:\/\/www.cbc.ca\/news\/canada\/sudbury\/oil-pooling-at-creek-near-gogama-train-derailment-environment-ministry-1.2959886\" target=\"_blank\">unit train of tar sands oil in Canada<\/a>\u00a0in February, we learned that the conventional wisdom among people covering the oil-by-rail industry regarding the flammability of tar sands oil has been dead wrong. A second\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.cbc.ca\/news\/canada\/sudbury\/train-carrying-crude-oil-derails-near-gogama-ont-1.2985703\" target=\"_blank\">derailment and explosion<\/a>\u00a0on March 7th involved<a href=\"http:\/\/www.railwayage.com\/index.php\/safety\/fireballs-strike-again-in-northern-ontario.html\" target=\"_blank\">\u00a0synbit<\/a>, which is a form of bitumen diluted with synthetic crude\u00a0oil.<\/p>\n<p>While there are many examples of this mischaracterization of the dangers of moving tar sands by rail that can be found in the press, here at DeSmogBlog we didn\u2019t have to look far. In an article last year about how to make\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.desmogblog.com\/2014\/08\/08\/regulators-ignore-one-proven-way-eliminate-bakken-bomb-trains-oil-stabilization\">Bakken crude less dangerous\u00a0<\/a>we wrote that the government had plans to allow tar sands oil to be transported in the\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.desmogblog.com\/2014\/03\/14\/why-nothing-will-happen-oil-rail-safety\">unsafe\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">DOT<\/span>-111<\/a>\u00a0rail tank cars \u201cbecause it is not\u00a0explosive.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>While raw bitumen from the Alberta tar sands is not volatile or highly flammable, when it is diluted with natural gas condensate to form a mixture known as\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/insideclimatenews.org\/news\/20120626\/dilbit-primer-diluted-bitumen-conventional-oil-tar-sands-Alberta-Kalamazoo-Keystone-XL-Enbridge\" target=\"_blank\">dilbit<\/a><a href=\"http:\/\/insideclimatenews.org\/news\/20120626\/dilbit-primer-diluted-bitumen-conventional-oil-tar-sands-Alberta-Kalamazoo-Keystone-XL-Enbridge\" target=\"_blank\">,<\/a>which is typically done to make it easier to transport, it appears that it can be as dangerous as the Bakken crude that has now been proven to be highly flammable and explosive in multiple train\u00a0derailments.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tar Sands by Rail Disasters: The Latest Wave in the Bomb Train Assault With the first crash and explosion of aunit train of tar sands oil in Canada\u00a0in February, we learned that the conventional wisdom among people covering the oil-by-rail industry regarding the flammability of tar sands oil has been dead wrong. A second\u00a0derailment and [&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":[1642,103,588,2466,4060,781,3999],"class_list":["post-6374","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-energy-2","category-environment","tag-bitumen","tag-canada","tag-oil","tag-oil-by-rail","tag-synbit","tag-tar-sands","tag-train-derailment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6374","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=6374"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6374\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6375,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6374\/revisions\/6375"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6374"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6374"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6374"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}