I covered all this before. The reason the oil is coming to ports in Texas is because if it is shipped internationally as everyone knows it will for tax advantages. So the idea the tar sands oil. which is 50/50 naphtha, will ever be modified enough to be safe is nonsense. It is a highly explosive mixture and is not crude oil. Not even close. Molecularly they are two different compounds.
I know this stuff better than I know my own name. This explosion problem is a long term problem so long as the oil is being transported across the country, be it rails or otherwise. This is highly explosive stuff and Trans Canada wants to leverage taxes in their favor before they ship the lousy junk by tanker to the rest of the world.
This is a long term problem as long as the federal government allows this to happen and no one in Congress is going to do anything about it. The US Department of Transportation's Federal Railroad Administration has to stop the cross country movement of oil from Canada. This is Canadian oil that needs a Canadian solution.I don't find it at all reasonable to smile with moments of hope that the folks in ND will modify the mixture as if nothing is ever going to happen again. It will happen again and again. This is a volatile mixture and is made to travel over thousands of miles to leverage taxes. This Canadian product is nonsense and a burden to the USA. The clean up costs from any of these explosions needs to be sent to TransCanada to pay for the damages they are causing to US railroads as well as emergency services and clean up and repairs and inspections.
That distance on the map from ND to Texas is as the crow flies, that is not where the rails are running. The longer the distance from extraction to refinery INCREASE the opportunity for disaster. It won't change.
The Obama White House has to end this circus and forbid the Naphtha laden oil in the country.
Naphtha is an explosive chemical.
Chemical Stability: (click here) coniditions to avoid aire and explosion hazards are serious when this product is exposed to heat or flame. Keep away from heat, sparks or open flame.
Does anyone ever stop to realize how completely stupid that statement is in relation to safety? To prevent tragedy with these chemicals one has to be able to predict SPARKS. Right.
Why did the BP Deepwater Horizon occur? Because the petroleum industry has OCD in regard to safety? Heck no. The only OCD the petroleum industry has is making money.
The oil industry doesn't even play the odds with safety. They completely disregard it. BP had an oil refinery explosion killing employees. A few years later the BP Deepwater Horizon exploded at it's well head.
This is a successful company? No. It is one that has a product worth incredible amounts of money to cover up all the mistakes, injuries and deaths.
...Fatalities (click here) for the industry jumped from 112 in 2011 to 138 in 2012, a 23
percent increase and the largest number of deaths of oil and gas workers
since the current data series for the BLS Census of Fatal Occupational
Injuries (CFOI) began in 2003. The bureau reported an oil and gas
fatality rate of 24.2 deaths per 100,000 workers. That's higher than the
21.2 reported by the notoriously dangerous agriculture, forestry,
fishing and hunting sector...And if this impresses anyone as tragedy and an industry out of control, the rates in the North Sea is worse. Now, an industry that sees paying life insurance to families as an operating expense has little respect for any safety at all. The cities along the transportation routes can forget the idea tragedy will never happen. It will happen and no different than with the BP disaster, the federal laws will enforce payment for the damage, but, also as with the BP Disaster the USA laws become meaningless to these companies as they play and play with the legal system.
In order to end the danger to any American city, the oil needs to be refined near it's origins. That goes for North Dakota, too. There should be a law which prohibits long distance transportation of chemicals including oil, methane of any other by product of oil refineries.
When this explosion happened and killed those people, I guarantee you the company had no idea what the report was stating as the problem. The CEO simply paid fines, insurance policies and said, "So, we need new heat exchangers, right?"
This is an industry that hires USA inspectors so there are less inspectors to make their rounds. There is no other reason why the petroleum industry hires USA inspectors into their employ. If the petroleum industry actually hired inspectors to better safety margins and maintain their rigs to the highest standard possible, I'd think it was great. But, that isn't why they hire them.
They hire them out of the government to minimize the inspections. Maintaining a rig in perfect condition is too expensive and requires time. It slows down the drilling if repairs are necessary. Why was the CEO from BP on the Deepwater Horizon? To check the inspection logs? Heck, no. He was there to push the drilling regardless of whatever safety margins were breached.
