dagblog - Comments for "The Best Argument Against The Keystone Pipeline Comes From: The Manhattan Institute?"

Now I know just a bit more.

A Guy Called LULU — Mon, 08 Jul 2013 20:27:01 +0000

Now I know just a bit more. The train is said to have been parked in a siding, the air-brakes set, and the engines shut down. The siding was on a downhill grade.
Some early speculation is that the engines being shut down might have caused a drop in the air pressure of the breaking system and thus caused the rollaway. I very much doubt this but can not be certain. Regardless, safety measures were either ignored or defeated. When the train was parked, and the brakes set, there should have been hand brakes set at both ends. There is some arbitrary standard set by rule as to how many but I would say that brakes on the engines and six to ten cars would be more than sufficient.
When the air-brakes are set they stay set unless the high pressure leaks off and that would be a very long time unless age and wear had compromised the seals. This definitely happens and the brakes on any single car or even a couple cannot be trusted to work properly, but the more cars, the better statistical odds that enough brakes work as designed to hold the train for a long time. As I write this the information I have heard is that it was a seventy-car train. For a sufficient number of air-brakes to bleed off overnight to let that train roll out is a statistically freakish occurrence. If the crew that left the train actually didn’t tie hand brakes they were very negligent but were also testifying, without knowing it, in agreement with my view that without other factors coming into play that the air-brakes alone would keep the train in place for days 99,999% of the time. Overnight, to a higher percentage.
So, what might have happened? Each air-brake has a release valve with a lever going to the side of the car. It can be pushed slightly and a controlled amount of air can be released or it can be pushed sharply and the valve will trip and all the air will release letting the brakes completely free. A person could walk along the track hitting each release lever and in doing so release all the air-brakes. If no hand brakes were in use as a backup the train would take off down hill. A kid might do this ignorant of the consequences just to be doing something as he aped off walking along the tracks or someone could do it deliberately and also release any hand brakes.
If it was done deliberately as an act of terrorism a second person could drive a hijacked gasoline tanker truck, or worse yet, a liquefied petroleum gas truck onto a crossing at a strategic spot, maybe next to a refinery or a chemical plant, or maybe just in the middle of a sleepy town late at night, and lock it up giving all involved plenty of time to go to a nearby hill and watch the ensuing fireworks.

A few lines from my above

A Guy Called LULU — Mon, 08 Jul 2013 16:25:56 +0000

In reply to A couple things occur to me

A few lines from my above comment:

Accidents happen. Pictures are available courtesy google.

Trains are remarkably easy to sabotage.

A derailment could be deliberately caused anywhere that the train is moving, even within a city.

I composed at least one comment, about the time this subject was the juice of the day because of Keystone, describing ways one or two people could easily cause something with loaded fuel trains like what just happened in Canada. I don't have time to look for it/them and may well have not posted them. I often compose and then don't post for one reason or another.

This incident was probably an accident. That is just a guess based on statistics and the video is the full extent of what I know, but it is a sad tragic demonstration of serious potentials.

http://www.usatoday.com/videos/news/world/2013/07/08/2497795/

Petroleum coke, which is

A Guy Called LULU — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 06:05:00 +0000

In reply to I wonder if they could put

Petroleum coke, which is being stored in a massive black pile on the shores of the Detroit River, was described Wednesday as one of the world’s nastiest fuel products.

http://blogs.windsorstar.com/2013/03/06/environmental-fears-spike-after-... Scary picture included.

The petroleum coke — or ‘petcoke’ as it’s called — recently started to be produced in much greater amounts at the nearby Marathon Oil refinery in Detroit.

The refinery, which sits behind Zug Island next to the I-75 freeway, completed a massive $2-billion facility upgrade last fall allowing it to process heavy Canadian crude oil brought in by pipeline from the Alberta oil sands. The refinery processes 120,000 barrels per day of crude oil.

This Bloomberg article from

A Guy Called LULU — Sat, 02 Mar 2013 17:10:45 +0000

In reply to You ask a lotta questions.

This Bloomberg article from January 2012 indicates shipping by rail will be done in tank cars which means the product will be liquid, at least when heated.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-01-23/buffett-s-burlington-northern-a...

Additionally, from the Kennebec Journal:

A train carrying 104 tank cars of crude from the Bakken oil fields in North Dakota came through Maine last weekend on a 2,435-mile journey to the Irving Oil refinery in Saint John, New Brunswick. It rolled through Portland, Waterville and Bangor on Pan Am Railways tracks, on its way to Canada's largest oil refinery.

This so-called unit train -- made up only of oil tank cars -- is an example of how Irving and other energy giants are reacting to a fast-changing North American petroleum market, and how Maine figures into the developments.Snip

The first big shipment was made over the weekend. Each of the 104 cars carried roughly 700 barrels of oil. The train traveled through Chicago to Rotterdam Junction, N.Y., where it moved over Pan Am Railways track through southern and eastern Maine and connected with the New Brunswick Southern Railway for the trip to Saint John. Snip

Irving Oil rarely discusses its business practices, and it didn't respond to email questions from the newspaper; but Grindrod said he's aware that the refinery is ramping up its crude offloading capacity from two cars a day to 100 cars, whether it comes from the Canadian tar sands or the Bakken field.

http://www.kjonline.com/news/oil-crossing-maineby-way-of-railroad_2012-0...

I suspect they'll sell the

Resistance — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 23:03:22 +0000

In reply to Thanks. If it is shipped as

I suspect they'll sell the goo to some entrepreneur in some third world country?

If the goo was mixed with other sedimentary materials, would it make a good roadway material to be used in the jungles? We used Agent Orange as a defoliant; maybe this material is a more solid defoliant?

When it returns to its solid state, it may be able to stay bonded together, being tar based it would repel the water, decreasing it's breakdown time?

Could the tar sands, be mixed with solar heated water, piped from the Hudson Bay and then sent as a slurry mix; just as Peabody Coal did, when they drained the aquifer on the Navajo reservation, when they shipped both the coal in a slurry mix. Getting both coal and stolen water from Arizona, to supply thirsty California.

The water/ tar mix would be separated at the end of the Keystone pipeline.

The water extracted would be redistributed to drought stricken Texas.

No need to draw down the Great lakes region, to satisfy the demand for water resources, in the USA, just go to the Hudson Bay which is upstream, of the Great Lakes.

Images for map of canada and usa

I wonder if they could put

Verified Atheist — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 19:39:52 +0000

In reply to Thanks. If it is shipped as

I wonder if they could put the toxic waste back where they got the oil if they were in the habit of building refineries close enough to the source. I have no idea how viable or healthy that would be, but it's a thought.

Thanks. If it is shipped as

A Guy Called LULU — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 18:59:50 +0000

In reply to You ask a lotta questions.

Thanks. If it is shipped as raw tar sand [I hadn't considered that] then all my major objections, so far, to using trains are satisfied. Of course that means hauling a great volume of extra material to the refinery which would then need hauling off after distilling the desired oil.

It would seem that the problems I suggest with pipelines would still be in play plus the disposal of the non-oil part of the gook and the added chemicals.

Maybe refineries should be built close to the source and then the resultant oil shipped to market by established means rather that shipping it along with billions of tons of toxic waste.

No place is good for the toxic waste goo but I guess my choice would be to let the producer deal with it close to its source rather than shipping it to The Gulf Coast and then to where ever it would finally end up.

You ask a lotta questions.

Donal — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 18:36:00 +0000

In reply to A couple things occur to me

You ask a lotta questions. First - it isn't crude oil, it is diluted tar sands. The picture that they always show of bitumen tar sands looks like sticky, brown clumps of sand, but also contains, clay, water and bitumen. They dilute it with trade secret chemicals and heat it to 158 F to get it to flow through pipes.

It is mined with large shovels, so I suppose raw tar sand could be shoveled onto a train car rather than piped. I also presume raw tar sand wouldn't have to be heated or diluted to travel by train. It just wouldn't be as fast or efficient as piping it into a train tanker car. And that wouldn't be as fast as piping it all the way.

Unfortunately making it flow fast also makes it more difficult to clean up if it spills.

A couple things occur to me

A Guy Called LULU — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 17:54:18 +0000

In reply to Here's a spill report from

A couple things occur to me in relation to this conversation. First, oil shipped by rail would be done in unit trains, probably consisting of a hundred cars or more as is the case now with coal, grain, containers, and over-the-road truck trailers. These trains are often longer than one mile in length and trains of three and a half miles in length have been operated in the U.S. with power distributed along their length.
Accidents happen. Pictures are available courtesy google. Spilled coal is easily cleaned up. Spilled muck would be much more of a problem. Trains are remarkably easy to sabotage. A derailment could be deliberately caused anywhere that the train is moving, even within a city. I say this based on twenty years of switching cars in a train yard and also working as a brakeman on thru freight. In a deliberate action it would be easy to ignite the resultant spilled crude or even that crude in intact tank cars. That is assuming that that crap will even burn.

Above ground pipelines are also more vulnerable than below ground lines. They would also be more exposed to cold temperatures. I do not know how critical the temperature is for transfer by pipeline or for drainage from a tank car, but any break of a pipeline or any derailment of any train, not just the one carrying oil, would cause a significant delay of all other crude already in transit.
Would the interruption of flow in a pipeline cause the crude to congeal beyond the ability of pumps to move it? Would an oil train sitting in the middle of Nebraska waiting for the line to be cleared have the same problem? An above ground pipeline would be easier to re-heat but also easier to deliberately sabotage.

Here's a spill report from

Donal — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 13:15:19 +0000

In reply to Gee whiz, just when I think

Here's a spill report from 2012:

Dilbit is harder to remove from waterways than the typical light crude oil—often called conventional crude—that has historically been used as an energy source.

While most conventional oils float on water, much of the dilbit sank beneath the surface. Submerged oil is significantly harder to clean up than floating oil: A large amount of oil remains in the riverbed near Marshall, and the cleanup is expected to continue through the end of 2012.

- See more at: http://insideclimatenews.org/news/20120626/dilbit-primer-diluted-bitumen...

Dilbit is harder to remove from waterways than the typical light crude oil—often called conventional crude—that has historically been used as an energy source.

- See more at: http://insideclimatenews.org/news/20120626/dilbit-primer-diluted-bitumen...

Dilbit is harder to remove from waterways than the typical light crude oil—often called conventional crude—that has historically been used as an energy source.

While most conventional oils float on water, much of the dilbit sank beneath the surface. Submerged oil is significantly harder to clean up than floating oil: A large amount of oil remains in the riverbed near Marshall, and the cleanup is expected to continue through the end of 2012.