Off the rails in North Dakota.
The Department of Transportation
predicted last July that there would be an average over the next decade of 10 major derailments a year of trains carrying crude oil or ethanol. Wednesday morning there was another one, this time in Heimdal, North Dakota, a tiny town about 50 miles east of Minot. It was the fifth such derailment nationwide this year.
At least six tank cars caught fire when a BNSF train hauling crude oil from the Bakken formation derailed at about 7:15 AM CT.
The Federal Railroad Administration issued a statement:
"A crude oil train has derailed near Heimdal, North Dakota this morning, resulting in a large fire involving several tank cars. The town of Heimdal is being evacuated. The FRA has deployed a ten person investigation team to the site and will be conducting a thorough investigation into the cause of the accident. Today's incident is yet another reminder of why we issued a significant, comprehensive rule aimed at improving the safe transport of high hazard flammable liquids. The FRA will continue to look at all options available to
The tank cars involved at Heimdal were CPC-1232, an upgraded model that the industry has said would improve safety as they replaced the older DOT-111 tank cars. But this is the fifth in the past six such derailments in which CPC-1232 tank cars were punctured and burned.
One of the problems with oil from the Bakken Shale formation of North Dakota and Montana is that it is more volatile than other oil. North Dakota issued its own rule last month mandating that companies remove volatiles before shipping. But state regulators there are notoriously cozy with the oil and gas industry, frequently reducing fines for environmental violations by 90 percent, when they are imposed at all. So it remains to be seen whether the rule will have an impact on derailment spills and fires.
According to a review of records by the Associated Press, there have been at least 24 oil-train accidents since 2006 in the U.S. and Canada that involved a fire, derailment or significant amount of fuel spilled.
The U.S. Department of Transportation issued new regulations last week that the industry says are too strict and that critics, including several members of Congress, feel aren't strong enough. Among the things they will do is require that the steel walls of tank cars must be 9/16ths of an inch thick instead of the half-inch the industry wants. The regulations also require that electronically controlled pneumatic brakes be used on most trains carrying high-hazard flammable fluids by 2023 at the latest and that the top speed on all crude oil trains be 50 mph.