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.
Oil Train Regulation Passes in California
California lawmakers on Friday passed legislation requiring railroad companies to tell emergency officials when crude oil trains will chug through the state. The bill would require railroads to notify the state's Office of Emergency Services when trains carrying crude oil from Canada and North Dakota are headed to refineries in the most populous U.S. state. It passed its final vote in the Assembly 61-1, with strong bipartisan support within the state legislature in Sacramento. The bill now goes to Democratic Governor Jerry Brown for his signature. "We have a spotlight on this issue because of the seriousness of the risk to public safety that it presents," said the bill's author, Democratic Assembly man Roger Dickinson, whose district encompasses parts of Sacramento along the trains' route.
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.
