Oil trains are disasters-in-waiting/ Kinder Morgan court win

Business Forum: Oil trains are disasters-in-waiting

StarTribune  by FRED MILLAR    November 16, 2014

The knee-jerk reaction in Minnesota and elsewhere to the spate of North American crude oil disasters — beefing up emergency capabilities — is predictable, but dead wrong. The glum, vivid consensus from fire chiefs and emergency managers, at the April 2014 high-level expert National Transportation Safety Forum on Ethanol and Crude Oil Transportation, is that derailments of 100-tanker oil trains are “way beyond our current capabilities.” Following long-standing, prudent U.S. Transportation Department “Orange Book” guidance, fire chiefs testified that “even if we had an infinite amount of foam” they can only do defensive firefighting, pulling back at least one-half mile and letting the explosions and fires happen.

Minnesota, as a crude-by-rail corridor facing huge risks and no benefits, should be loudly demanding to see the railroads’ hidden documents, forcing the railroads to prove that they have selected the “safest and most secure” routes for all their highest risk hazmat cargoes, as a 2007 federal law requires....  read more here

 

Action must be taken to reduce the hazards from railroad shipments of Bakken oil

By Carolyn Heising       DesMoinesRegister.com

11/15/14

Now is the time to ask: Is the growing practice of using trains to carry highly-flammable crude oil from North Dakota's Bakken shale field through communities in Iowa safe and even necessary?
.... read more here

 

 THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck    

Trees that were recently cut down by Kinder Morgan workers are seen in Burnaby 

Update:  11/17/14

Massive crowd on Burnaby Mountain, as Kinder Morgan injunction takes effect

Kinder Morgan to resume pipeline work after Canadian court win

Canadian Press | November 14, 2014   

 Kinder Morgan Energy Partners LP said on Friday it would resume preliminary work on its Trans Mountain pipeline after a British Columbia court granted an injunction against protesters blocking work crews in the Vancouver suburb of Burnaby....

...But many area residents oppose plans to run the line under the mountain, and protesters had blocked crews drilling two bore holes for preliminary work on a planned tunnel.

The injunction is Kinder’s latest win against the project’s opponents. The city of Burnaby sought to block work on the site after crews cut down trees, but lost before both a court and the national energy regulator.

The project is also opposed by many environmental and aboriginal groups, as well as by the mayors of Burnaby and Vancouver.....   read more here