Farmers Competing with Crude Oil Over Railroad Use- video

MyStateLine.com  9/01/14    


Rockford- Farmers are preparing to ship their crops across the country after an record harvest season. Those sending their crops by train may be derailed by a growing problem: crude oil is in competition with grain for railroad use, and Senator Dick Durbin says there are not enough trains for both to transport goods efficiently.

Durbin says, “In the northern part of the Midwest, the upper Midwest, there's a competition between the farmers trying to move grain to markets, and oil, crude oil that's being shifted in the same area in tank cars.”......more here  also see video here

Slow pace of rail recovery stirs fear of future woes

 

Matthew Staver: A BNSF Railway Company train in La Junta, Colorado, U.S. Photographer: Matthew Staver/Bloomberg

Bakken.com  Susan Taylor and Solarina Ho    TORONTO (Reuters)  Aug 15, 2014

More than eight months after an extreme winter began snarling North American rail traffic, a Reuters analysis of industry data shows delays lingering, raising the risk of a second winter of chaos on the rails.

Across the continent’s seven largest operators, trains ran almost 8 percent slower on average and sat idle at key terminals for nearly three hours longer in the second quarter than a year earlier, data from the main railroads, known as Class 1, show.

While Canada’s rail operators have nearly recovered, many U.S. operators lag far behind.
The concerns are sharpest in the U.S. Farm Belt, with lawmakers fearful that the biggest crops on record may be slow to reach markets or could even rot.

Rail logjams contributed to the economic slowdown early in the year, rippling across corporate America and affecting everything from car makers to ethanol producers.....[snip]
 
ECONOMIC FALLOUT

In the United States, more than 40 percent of goods, valued at more than $550 billion, are shipped by railroad each year on some 140,000 miles of track. Canada’s 30,100 miles of track carry half of the country’s export goods.

Frozen transportation links contributed to a nearly 3 percent contraction in the U.S. economy during the first quarter, the New York Federal Reserve said last week.....


.....“We’re sounding the alarms right now,” North Dakota Senator Heidi Heitkamp told Reuters. “We believe the 2014 crop could be taken off the fields and there won’t be any place to store it, because of the lack of ability to move product by rail.”

BNSF and Canada’s CP Rail operate the main rail networks in North Dakota, where farmers vie for space with some 700,000 barrels per day of crude oil shipped by rail from the state’s Bakken Shale.

“You can’t see these massive increases in crude-by-rail and not appreciate that they are creating problems for moving agricultural products,” Heitkamp said.....read more here

Rail shipping disruptions, fees and flammable materials- new stories

Oil trains crowd out grain shipments to NW ports

Seattle Times  July 26, 2014

As oil trains hauling North Dakota crude delay rail transport of grain to Pacific Northwest ports, the prospect of growing fossil-fuel traffic has some fearing that such shipping disruptions will become a long-term problem impeding exports and the regional economy.....

Oregon Oil Train Safety Report Calls For More Rail Inspectors, Fees

Daily Astorian    July 26, 2014

A statewide rail safety report released today identifies gaps in the resources Oregon needs to prevent and respond to an oil train derailment.

The report, ordered by Gov. John Kitzhaber in February, calls for more rail safety personnel and more funds to pay for training emergency responders for an oil train derailment. To help pay for both of those needs, the report recommends charging fees for transporting crude oil by rail through the state.....

Proposed rail transportation safety rules will impact ethanol industry 

Saturday, July 26, 2014   By Robert Pore      Grand Island Independent

Last week the U.S. Department of Transportation released details of its rulemaking proposal to improve the safe transportation of large quantities of flammable materials by rail — particularly crude oil and ethanol.,,,

.... Dinneen expressed concern that the rule paints with too broad a brush and fails to distinguish between products with an admirable safety record — ethanol — and those for which legitimate and serious concerns have been raised — highly volatile crude oil from the Bakken.....