By Russell Gold And Betsy Morris
U.S. regulators are urging railroads to make dramatic operating
changes, including how they deal with wheel defects, saying a wheel
problem may have caused the fiery oil-train derailment in Illinois
last month.
Despite multiple warning signs, a train carrying crude oil from
North Dakota to Philadelphia continued to travel on a potentially
faulty wheel, according to a preliminary federal investigation.
Twenty-one cars of a BNSF Railway Co. oil train derailed near
Galena, Ill., 160 miles west of Chicago. Several cars ruptured
during the accident and the oil inside caught fire, generating
large explosions.
On Friday, the Federal Railroad Administration issued a safety
advisory pointing to a broken wheel and telling railroads to act
more aggressively to fix similar defects found on other trains.
According to investigators, a trackside device flagged the oil
train's defective wheel about 130 miles before the derailment. A
month before the accident, other similar devices registered a
reading on this railcar's wheel at a level that indicated there was
a flat spot that made it "condemnable," according to the safety
advisory.
Despite the reading, BNSF didn't break any industry or federal
rule. Industry guidelines suggest that the wheel be replaced the
next time the tank car was sent for repairs.
In late March, BNSF began slowing down its trains that haul
crude oil to 35 miles an hour in cities with over 100,000
residents, according to a letter sent to its customers. The
railroad stepped up the frequency of track inspections to 2 1/2
times the rate required by FRA regulators along certain
waterways.
BNSF also said it would act faster to take railcars out of
service if its own equipment detects a problem with a car,
locomotive or wheels, a spokesman said. "It's clear to us that
given the recent incidences, along with our own in Galena, that
more needs to be done," he said.
The rail agency's new safety advisory questioned the "general
mechanical condition of the equipment" used in trains hauling crude
oil and other highly flammable substances and recommended that
railroads strengthen their criteria for identifying potentially
defective wheels and remove them from trains more quickly.
Government regulators also noted that defective wheels can put
stress on train tracks that can lead to breaks or cracks in the
rail.
The safety advisory was one of several plus a new emergency rule
issued Friday by the U.S. Transportation Department aimed at
pressuring railroads to step up their game in its continuing effort
to make trains carrying crude oil safer. The proposals--most of
which aren't binding but which the railroads generally
follow--could further slow trains carrying highly hazardous
substances and cause disruptions to other rail traffic.
In an effort to bring greater transparency to crude transport by
rail, the new policies require the railroads maintain records
tracking the crude from the wells where it is pumped all the way to
the refineries buying the oil. Those records should include what
energy company pumped the oil out of the ground, what trucking
company or pipeline carried it to the railroad terminal, and the
results of any tests performed on the crude to determine its
volatility and flammability.
Currently, railroads aren't privy to a lot of that information,
according to a spokesman for BNSF, and they don't have a system for
capturing it.
The federal directives "build on the many practices and
protocols the industry has applied for years," said Edward R.
Hamberger, chief executive of the Association of American
Railroads. But the advisory directing railroads to provide customer
information is problematic, he said, because they don't possess it
and customers aren't required to provide it.
Railroads own the locomotives and the track. They don't own the
vast majority of tank cars.
Still, regulators said in a letter to the AAR that they're
hopeful that within 30 days, railroads will be able to provide this
information within 90 minutes of a request on cell phones and
tablets.
In the next few weeks, the government is expected to issue new
rules about the design and build of tank cars carrying hazardous
liquids.
A spate of derailments and fiery explosions involving trains
transporting crude oil from North Dakota has prompted the
government to undertake a wide-ranging review of its rules. The
volume of oil hauled by railroads has mushroomed in recent years,
increasing to nearly 374 million barrels last year from 20 million
barrels in 2010, according to the U.S. Energy Information
Administration.
An emergency order, also issued Friday by the Federal Railroad
Administration, places a 40 mph speed limit in urban areas for
trains carrying significant volumes of flammable liquid, such as
crude oil. The major North American railroads had already agreed to
a similar, voluntary speed limit last year after multiple oil train
derailments. The order calls into question the safety of both
DOT-111 and newer CPC-1232 unjacketed cars after a spate of recent
accidents resulted in puncturing of those types of cars, even at
lower speeds.
--Laura Stevens contributed to this article.
Write to Russell Gold at russell.gold@wsj.com and Betsy Morris
at betsy.morris@wsj.com
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