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is it still to unsafe to build a pipeline?

Steve

Well-known member
I have been a bit surprised at how little news coverage there is of the horrific oil train accident in Canada.

is it becasue the safe alternative is a pipeline Obama could have allowed to be built 5 years ago is safer.. but it still not approved?

The Canadian prime minister’s assertion in May that transporting oil to the United States by rail is environmentally challenging seems to be a bit of an understatement after an entire Canadian city was obliterated by a train derailment of crude oil from the Bakken shale oil fields. Obama and his minions have done everything in their power to block oil pipelines. Therefore, record amounts of crude oil are being transported by rail car.

The Montreal, Maine & Atlantic Corp. said Sunday air brakes may be to blame for the derailment, which set off fires and explosions that destroyed much of the center of Lac-Megantic, less than 20 miles from the Maine border.

The unmanned train, carrying thousands of barrels of oil, began rolling toward town in the early hours of Saturday for reasons still under investigation. It went off the tracks and exploded.

The train was parked at the Nantes station, and its locomotive at the station was shut down after the engineer departed for the night. That may have resulted in the release of air brakes on the locomotive holding the train in place, the company said.

Investigators are also looking whether an onboard fire shortly before the train arrived at the station may have played a role.

Before the accident, the MMA railway had been “regarded as a turnaround story,” finding renewed success in transporting crude by rail,

The railway is a key link from oil from the Bakken formation and Canadian oil sands to Irving Oil’s refinery in Saint John, New Brunswick, the newspaper said.

Shipments of crude by rail have increased sharply in recent years, and have become enmeshed with the controversy surrounding oil pipelines and environmental concerns about the oil boom.

Analysts at Scotiabank said in a note Monday oil shipments in Canada have almost tripled over the past two years to more than 14,000 car loadings so far this year.

“This has been one of the ways in which markets have attempted to circumvent a shortage of North American pipeline infrastructure,” the bank said.

Nearly 234,000 carloads of crude were shipped in 2012, up from 9,500 carloads in 2008

The BNSF railroad, part of Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway empire, is one of the biggest crude-carriers.

“Our railroad is now transporting about 500,000 barrels of oil daily, roughly 10% of the total produced in the ‘lower 48′,

on another note..
By early 2015, thousands of newly minted, gleaming crude tank cars will leave the sheds of manufacturers such as Trinity Industries Inc., Union Tank Car Co. and Greenbrier Co. to carry rising North American crude production, offering some relief to the choked North American oil pipelines.

On any given week, three to seven CP Rail trains laden with crude oil from the North Dakota Bakken field whisk across North America, bypassing the pipeline bottlenecks in mid-continent that are depressing oil prices and unaffected by the noise in Washington, D.C., that is holding back the Keystone XL pipeline.

It’s a roaring business. In 2009, when Calgary-based Canadian Pacific Railway Ltd. started dabbling in crude oil transportation, it moved 500 of its black barrel-shaped cars out of the basin. Last year, its oil trains carried 13,000 cars and soon CP could be moving 70,000 cars or more a year out of the North Dakota Bakken tight-oil field alone.

“The tank car backlog is close to 48,000, and perhaps as many as 30,000 are related to crude petroleum,” said Toby Kolstad, who runs advisory firm Rail Theory Forecasts.

The number of tank cars ordered for shipping crude and expected to be delivered by the end of 2014 will be enough to move two million barrels of oil per day, almost three times what is currently extracted from the Bakken shale basin, Mr. Kolstad said.

That’s the size of two Keystone XLs and one Seaway pipeline.

As much as 40% of the orders are from Canadian entities desperate to get their crude out of Western Canada and into U.S. refineries in the East and on the Gulf Coast.

This is a dramatic turnaround for train manufacturers that never thought they would see another growth spurt in their industry.

Mr. Buffett has a controlling stake in Union Tank Car, and has emerged as a major beneficiary of the crude-via-rail boom as the owner of BNSF Railway Co

Pipeline companies’ inability to push through regulations and opposition to shipping Alberta bitumen to refineries across North America has allowed railway companies, tank-car makers, barge operators and a whole host of other transportation sectors to build a tidy revenue stream based on crude.

Buffet couldn't have created a better scenario for his once failing rail and tank car manufacturing companies...

it is a tragedy that such a large disaster is all but ignored by the media..
 

Traveler

Well-known member
I understand some of the missing may have been vaporized. Couldn't we build one of these railroads near the White House?
 

Whitewing

Well-known member
Traveler said:
I understand some of the missing may have been vaporized. Couldn't we build one of these railroads near the White House?

Since he's obviously sucking the lifeblood out of the country and the constitution, you'd probably have to drive a stake through his heart as well.
 

Silver

Well-known member
Steve said:
I have been a bit surprised at how little news coverage there is of the horrific oil train accident in Canada.

is it becasue the safe alternative is a pipeline Obama could have allowed to be built 5 years ago is safer.. but it still not approved?

No, it's because it happened in Canada.
 

iwannabeacowboy

Well-known member
seems like the Japanese nuke spill got a lot of coverage here and that is much further than Canada.

It isn't about location, it is about content. If a pipe had burst, I garan-da*n-tee you that it would be front page headline stuff.
 

Silver

Well-known member
I watch a lot of US news and what is a really big deal here seldom makes much of a splash on US networks. US networks have no Canadian political coverage,sometimes they may mention in passing if we get a new PM, but there will be zero coverage of the election. Unless something happens here that significantly affects the US it's not newsworthy.
Even the business editions on the major networks don't show the Canadian dollar, the TSX etc. but do show the Yen and Nikkei, Pound and FTSE etc.
Not saying it's bad or good, it's just the way it is.
The US networks do seem to be interested in that snot nosed Beaver kid that apparently has a Canadian passport though :?
 

Steve

Well-known member
iwannabeacowboy said:
seems like the Japanese nuke spill got a lot of coverage here and that is much further than Canada.

It isn't about location, it is about content. If a pipe had burst, I garan-da*n-tee you that it would be front page headline stuff.

I had about the same thought... so far we have had several nasty train derailments dumping crude... but nothing as tragic or horrendous as this spill...

just the dumping of crude alone should be a call to action, and to find a better way,.. but with this horrific tragedy, there should be such a backlash and outrage from all, that a better way would be found...

yet not a peep out of the media who often cries when a bird is black and tarred... now that a small town is all but destroyed... they are silent..

my prayers are for the families and friends in that devastated town,..
 

Silver

Well-known member
Silver said:
I watch a lot of US news and what is a really big deal here seldom makes much of a splash on US networks. US networks have no Canadian political coverage,sometimes they may mention in passing if we get a new PM, but there will be zero coverage of the election. Unless something happens here that significantly affects the US it's not newsworthy.
Even the business editions on the major networks don't show the Canadian dollar, the TSX etc. but do show the Yen and Nikkei, Pound and FTSE etc.
Not saying it's bad or good, it's just the way it is.
The US networks do seem to be interested in that snot nosed Beaver kid that apparently has a Canadian passport though :?

Edited to add:
Was there any US network coverage of all the broken pipelines spewing into the rivers during the floods in southern Alberta?
 

Steve

Well-known member
Silver said:
Silver said:
I watch a lot of US news and what is a really big deal here seldom makes much of a splash on US networks. US networks have no Canadian political coverage,sometimes they may mention in passing if we get a new PM, but there will be zero coverage of the election. Unless something happens here that significantly affects the US it's not newsworthy.
Even the business editions on the major networks don't show the Canadian dollar, the TSX etc. but do show the Yen and Nikkei, Pound and FTSE etc.
Not saying it's bad or good, it's just the way it is.
The US networks do seem to be interested in that snot nosed Beaver kid that apparently has a Canadian passport though :?

Edited to add:
Was there any US network coverage of all the broken pipelines spewing into the rivers during the floods in southern Alberta?

there was very little . not as much as the Arkansas pipeline we still hear about..

the last pipeline report I heard called for better safer pipeline design.. but even when searching the internet I didn't see much coverage on the Canadian pipelines.. .. a UPI and AP report was about it..
 
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