A Federal Court has ordered the Department of Transportation (DOT) to respond to a lawsuit filed by three environmental organizations—Earthjustice, Sierra Club and ForestEthics—in which the parties asked the court to order DOT to respond to the organizations’ request for an emergency order banning the use of DOT-111 tanks cars for the shipment of crude oil by rail.
DOT has 60 days to provide the Court with a response to Sierra Club’s lawsuit, which alleges that DOT is in violation of the law for failing to respond to its Unsafe Tank Car Petition. The petition, filed with DOT on ...
The U.S. Department of Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx and the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) today released a much-anticipated Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) to improve the safe rail transportation of flammable liquids, including petroleum crude oil and ethanol.
PHMSA also released a companion Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPRM) on oil spill response plans, seeking comments on current thresholds and their applicability to rail and a summary of a study finding that crude oil from the Bakken field presents greater ...
On June 12 and 13, 2014, Railway Age’s Crude by Rail Conference and Expo brought together representatives from the oil and gas industry, railroads, rail car manufacturers, Federal government, emergency response organizations and Wall Street, to address the implications of the dramatic increase in shipments of petroleum by rail (CBR).
Several informative presentations were made on tank car specifications and numerous other technical topics. This posting will summarize the policy and regulatory issues.
Ed Hamburger, President of the Association of American Railroads ...
As rail shipments of crude oil moving out of North Dakota’s Bakken formation have risen in recent years, so have derailments of trains carrying crude oil throughout the United States and Canada. One facet of the debate over how to improve the safety of crude by rail shipments concerns the volatility of Bakken crude compared to other crude oil moved by rail. In January the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) sent a letter to the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers (AFPM) requesting information on the tests and methods used to analyze and classify ...
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