Tuesday News

Port Commissioner's meeting

It was astounding, today at the Port Commissioners Meeting to have the representative from FRA launch into full on support of Fracking, cause his sons work on rigs. The sample jars were not passed around to the rabble audience.

Ed McCullough, FRA:
“one of the things about fracking is, not part of the FRA presentation, I’m just knowledgeable about it: the highest production well around Williston right now is 30% recovery, most of them average around 2 to 5% recovery. The whole point is that this is going to go on for a long time, they don’t have the technology to re-frack yet. As soon as they can re-frack and they go back to wells with 5 – 20% recovery years from now, it’s not the normal oil boom that we used to see, where they drill and pump the oil out over 10 or 20 or 30 years, this is just going to keep going. And that’s the end of my presentation.”

Update: this is must read.

Why the Bellingham story must continue to be told

Railroads disclose Oregon oil train routes but state undecided whether to share publicly

via OregonLive

Two of the railroad companies that notified the Oregon State Fire Marshal's office about oil train volumes and routes asked the state to sign confidentiality agreements restricting notification to first responders.
The state didn't sign them and received the information anyway. But the state wouldn't immediately release or even discuss the information railroads disclosed while it awaited an opinion from Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum's office.
"We do not have a resolution on the confidentiality," said Rich Hoover, spokesman for the State Fire Marshal's office. "We continue to evaluate the process."

Crude Oil Storage Tanks

via Oil Tech-Winnes

 The term "crude oil" refers to oil recovered from below the earth's surface which remains "untreated" or unrefined. The problem begins when contaminants settle out in the bottom of oil storage tanks. Contaminants come from various sources and some of the contaminants are indigenous to the crude oil itself. 

 The accumulation of crude tank bottoms is a problem experienced by most refineries the world over. The settling out of the sand, rust and heavy fractions in the crude oil results in a loss in ullage in refinery crude storage tanks and eventually refinery problems when slugs of this material are introduced into the plant.

 

 

New Rule To Reveal How Many Oil Tanker Trains Passing Through Wash. State

via KPLU

“I think it’s a very small step in the right direction,” said Eric de Place, policy director with Seattle’s Sightline Institute, an environmental think tank that has been reporting on what it calls an emerging "pipeline on rails." He says the new federal rules don’t go far enough.“Let’s keep in mind, this is not requiring them to use safer tank cars. This is not requiring them to slow down in our neighborhoods. This is not requiring them to inform emergency responders of the dangers," de Place said. "All they’re having to do is tell us some very rough figures about how many potentially explosive trains are in our states. So, it’s better than nothing, but it’s hardly where we need to be.”