{"id":7820,"date":"2015-05-04T06:02:56","date_gmt":"2015-05-04T11:02:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=7820"},"modified":"2015-05-04T06:02:56","modified_gmt":"2015-05-04T11:02:56","slug":"new-oil-by-rail-regulations-are-big-win-for-oil-and-rail-industries-wont-stop-bomb-trains","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=7820","title":{"rendered":"New Oil-By-Rail Regulations Are Big Win for Oil and Rail Industries, Won\u2019t Stop \u201cBomb Trains\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3 id=\"page-title\" class=\"page__title title\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.desmogblog.com\/2015\/05\/01\/new-oil-rail-regulations-are-big-win-oil-and-rail-industries-won-t-stop-bomb-trains\" target=\"_blank\">New Oil-By-Rail Regulations Are Big Win for Oil and Rail Industries, Won\u2019t Stop \u201cBomb Trains\u201d<\/a><\/h3>\n<p>The long-awaited\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.fra.dot.gov\/eLib\/Details\/L16354\" target=\"_blank\">oil-by-rail regulations<\/a>\u00a0released today are basically a guidebook for the oil and rail industries to continue doing business as usual when it comes to moving explosive Bakken crude oil by\u00a0rail.<\/p>\n<p>DeSmog\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.desmogblog.com\/2015\/04\/30\/white-house-involvement-north-dakota-oil-rail-regulations\">recently reported<\/a>\u00a0on how the Obama administration has worked behind the scenes to help achieve the oil industry\u2019s top goal when it came to these new regulations \u2014 allowing the oil producers to continue to put the highly volatile Bakken crude oil into rail tank cars without removing the natural gas liquids that make it such an explosive mixture.<\/p>\n<p>As we\u2019ve reported, there is a relatively simple fix to end, or significantly reduce, the \u201cbomb train\u201d disasters, via a process known as\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/desmogblog.com\/2014\/08\/08\/regulators-ignore-one-proven-way-eliminate-bakken-bomb-trains-oil-stabilization\">stabilization.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>But the new regulations not only give the industry a pass on doing this, they add to the \u201cwe need more research before we do anything\u201d approach that is the preferred tactic the industry and regulators are using to delay addressing the\u00a0issue.<\/p>\n<p>On page 232 of the new regulations, they state the\u00a0following:<\/p>\n<p>Any specific regulatory changes related to treatment of crude oil would consider further research and be handled in a separate\u00a0action.<\/p>\n<p>If you are a Bakken oil producer, that one sentence out of the close to 400 pages of new regulations is all you need to know. Time to start writing thank you notes to your\u00a0lobbyists.<\/p>\n<p>As Al Jazeera\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/america.aljazeera.com\/articles\/2015\/4\/8\/explosive-debate-oil-trains-safer-regulations.html\" target=\"_blank\">recently reported<\/a>, quoting a professor of petroleum engineering at the University of Houston who was commenting on the science of Bakken\u00a0crude:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong><span class=\"dquo\">\u201c<\/span>The notion that this requires significant research and development is a bunch of\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">BS<\/span>.\u201d<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>A similar sentiment was expressed in an editorial published by\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.railwayage.com\/index.php\/blogs\/david-thomas\/fra-freezes-on-tank-car-sloshing-doe-oil-volatility-bombshell-drops-like-a-dud.html?channel=\" target=\"_blank\">RailwayAge\u00a0<\/a>earlier this week responding to the Department of Energy announcement that it will study the issue of\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.mcclatchydc.com\/2015\/04\/28\/264789\/energy-transportation-departments.html\" target=\"_blank\">Bakken oil volatility<\/a><\/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>New Oil-By-Rail Regulations Are Big Win for Oil and Rail Industries, Won\u2019t Stop \u201cBomb Trains\u201d The long-awaited\u00a0oil-by-rail regulations\u00a0released today are basically a guidebook for the oil and rail industries to continue doing business as usual when it comes to moving explosive Bakken crude oil by\u00a0rail. DeSmog\u00a0recently reported\u00a0on how the Obama administration has worked behind 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":[3],"tags":[48,184,588,1729,2466,2837,723],"class_list":["post-7820","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-energy-2","tag-bakken","tag-crude-oil","tag-oil","tag-oil-and-gas-industry","tag-oil-by-rail","tag-oil-transportation","tag-shale-oil"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7820","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=7820"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7820\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7821,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7820\/revisions\/7821"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7820"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7820"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7820"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}