Union Pacific to Restart Container Shipments from U.S. West Coast Seaports
Union Pacific Corp container shipments from U.S. West Coast seaports to one of the railroad's major hubs in Chicago will restart early next week after a seven-day suspension, Chief Executive Lance Fritz told Reuters on Thursday.The railroad on Sunday night paused cargo shipments from the ports of Los Angeles, Long Beach, Oakland and Tacoma to its Global IV facility in Chicago in a bid to clear "significant congestion.""We're starting to see containers clear, so I anticipate in the seven-day period ...
Residents Flee South Texas Ahead of Harvey
Residents fleeing most powerful storm on U.S. mainland since 2005. Businesses closed and lines of cars streamed out of coastal Texas as officials called for residents to evacuate ahead of Hurricane Harvey, expected to arrive about midnight as the most powerful storm to hit the U.S. mainland in more than a decade. The hurricane is forecast to slam first near Corpus Christi, Texas, drop flooding rains along the central Texas coast and potentially loop back over the Gulf of Mexico before hitting Houston, some models showed. "My urgent message to my fellow Texans is that if you live in a region where evacuation has been ordered, you need to heed that advice and get out of harm's way while you can," Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said in a televised address.
Train Lobby Pushes to Weaken Safety Rule
Billionaire investor Warren Buffett is set to be a chief beneficiary of a bid by Senate Republicans to weaken new regulations to improve train safety in the $2.8 billion crude-by-rail industry, a key cog in the development of the vast North American shale oil fields. A series of oil train accidents, including the July 2013 explosion of a train carrying crude in Lac-Megantic, Quebec, that killed 47 people, led U.S. and Canadian regulators to announce sweeping safety rules in May. Among other things, U.S. oil trains are required to install new electronically controlled pneumatic (ECP) brakes. But in late June, the Republican-controlled Senate Commerce Committee approved a measure to drop that requirement, and order years of new research to confirm the safety benefits of ECP brakes.
Driver Shortage Makes Capitalizing on Low Oil Hard for Truckers
A chronic shortage of drivers means America's long-haul trucking companies are struggling to capitalize on cheap fuel prices that could allow them to take goods shipments away from railroads. A 50 percent fall in oil prices from their peak last year should have erased some of the cost advantage railroads enjoy, especially for longer hauls. But for customers hoping to save money by switching from train to truck, the lack of drivers makes that harder. "It's a nice theory, but the math doesn't add up because of the driver shortage," said Jason Seidl, an Cowen & Co analyst. An increasingly common way of shipping freight is by "intermodal" standardized containers that can be hauled by truck, ship and train.
Union Pacific Line Back in Service after Derailment
U.S. railroad company Union Pacific Corp said on Monday that a rail line on which a train derailed in northern Colorado was back in service. The line, which is used about once a day, connects Windsor, which is in the Niobrara shale play in northeastern Colorado, as well as other towns in the state. The train, which was heading from Windsor to an East Coast destination, spilled 5,300 gallons of oil on Friday morning. Over the past several months, the industry has been under heightened government scrutiny due to an increase in train derailments involving oil tank cars. The amount of oil moving by rail from shale formations has risen sharply because the region is not well-connected to pipelines.
