Coincidence or not, growing volumes of crude being moved by rail across North America are being accompanied by an increasing number of derailments, making rail Public Enemy No. 2 after pipelines.
The latest incident involved five cars in a Canadian Pacific Railway, CPR, train that left the tracks in Saskatchewan May 20, leaking an estimated 575 barrels of Western Canadian crude (originating from conventional fields, not the oil sands).
CPR said it dug a berm in the rural area to contain and help clean up the spill, which was the third in North America in two months — following 400 barrels in April in northern Ontario and 350 barrels in Minnesota in March.
In contrast, ExxonMobil’s Pegasus pipeline in Arkansas leaked up to 5,000 barrels of diluted bitumen in March, matching Canada’s worst spill from a train, when a Canadian National Railway train left the tracks west of Edmonton in 2005.
But, regardless of the wide discrepancy, critics argue that any spill is bad news for the environment and should intensify concerns at a time when the International Energy Agency is predicting that rail shipments from Alberta will reach 500,000 barrels per day in 2015 from 200,000 bpd now, while forecasting volumes in the United States will rise to 680,000 bpd this year from 20,000 bpd in 2009.
Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper joined the debate in New York on May 16 during a speech to rally business support for U.S. approval of TransCanada’s Keystone XL pipeline.
He said moving crude oil by rail is “more environmentally challenging” than building pipelines.
TransCanada Chief Executive Officer Russ Girling has previously warned that failure to build Keystone XL would backfire environmentally by forcing the industry to rely more heavily on shipments by rail.
Michael Bourque, president of the Railway Association of Canada, told the Globe and Mail his industry is “very safe for moving oil. We move a lot of hazardous materials and we have a really, really good safety record.”
He said crude-carrying trains are 2.7 times more energy efficient — based on a per-barrel-per-mile equation — than pipelines, thus emit less carbon dioxide per barrel in carrying the oil.
Holly Arthur, a spokeswoman for the Association of American Railroads, said rail and pipe have different requirements for how they report spills.
“Railroads are required to report anything, from a thimbleful to a spill. Pipelines are not required to report anything under five gallons,” she said, claiming that 94 percent of rail spills are under five gallons.
As every incident, regardless of size, attracts news media interest, “there is no question that the rail industry will come under increasing scrutiny and opposition,” as the number of 100-car trains through heavily populated urban areas grows, said Vancouver environmental activist Tzeporah Berman.
