Tuesday, July 15, 2014

Benicians win first victory in opposition to crude-by-rail 'bomb trains'- and other stories


Railroads, Not Pipelines, Are the Future for Crude, Argues Bakken Shipper
The head of one of the biggest rail shippers of Bakken crude oil from North Dakota to U.S. refineries made an assertive case Monday for transporting crude by rail, contending that the pipeline system isn’t capable of dealing with today’s complex and rapidly evolving energy markets.

Global Partners CEO Eric Slifka gave one of the keynote addresses at the conference of the Energy Department’s Energy Information Agency.

Railroads, he said, “will provide the foundation necessary to access a multitude of markets, from a multitude of locations, with a multitude of products. Rails offer flexibility, optionality, rapid transit, market penetration, all the while requiring low levels of capital.”.....continued here


Bay Area Indymedia
Benicians win first victory in opposition to crude-by-rail 'bomb trains'
On Thursday, 07.10.2014, citizens of Benicia and neighboring communities commemorated the 47 lives lost in the Lac Mégantic crude-by-rail explosion last year. Then they went into the Benicia Planning Commission meeting, where they won a 45-day extension of the public comment period on the Draft Environmental Impact Report regarding Valero's plan for transporting tar sands and shale oil to its Benicia Refinery on trains. Activists opposing the shipments began calling them "bomb trains" after explosions around the U.S. and in Canada. According to Andrés Soto, the majority of those who attended the Planning Commission meeting are adamantly opposed to crude-by-rail.
   audio here

Crude oil boom offers new threats along rail lines
An oil boom is moving through the most populous areas of Kankakee County as hundreds of thousands of gallons of crude oil is transported along the Union Pacific and Canadian National railroad lines.
The hazardous liquid is coming here from across the country where a new method of harvesting oil known as fracking has upped crude oil production in the U.S. to its highest level in two decades.
The growing fleet of railroad tanker cars is documented in reports railroad companies are submitting to the Illinois Emergency Management Agency and begs the question: What if there were an accident?  .... continued here

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