I got a call the other day from the producer of CJME/CKOM's John Gormley Live. Would I be willing to go on air the next morning as their lead-off interview, discussing shipment of crude by rail and pipelines?
The call came as a result of the tragic train derailment in Lac-Megantic, Que. Reporter Geoff Lee and I have probably written more about crude by rail and pipelines than anyone else in this province over the last five years in our role as the editorial team behind Pipeline News. Every few months over the last few years we've reported on yet another crude-by-rail facility popping up. Most recently, Geoff reported on not one, but three, in Unity. They're popping up like weeds.
The reason for this is the difference in price obtained for oil, as well as pipeline constraints. When, as an oil producer, you hear the words "pipeline apportionment," you are having a bad day. That means you can't ship all the oil you want to. It's like a farmer being told he has to leave some of his crop in the field.
When you hear "differential," it usually means you are getting substantially less for your oil than you could otherwise. That differential was huge a few months ago, but has tightened up considerably since. Shipping crude by rail meant you could still ship your oil even if the pipelines were clogged, and you could probably get a better price for it because you could ship it anywhere on the continent, not just where the mainline pipeline went.
There's big difference when it comes to public exposure, however. Pipelines, by law, are buried one metre below ground. You can't drive into a pipeline. You have to basically do something stupid, like digging where you are not supposed to, to hit one.
Rail cars, on the other hand, are always exposed to the public. The last number I had available to me, Saskatchewan was shipping about 53,000 barrels per day of crude by rail. A unit train, like the one in Quebec, has about 46,800 barrels capacity, based on 650 barrels per car (it will usually vary from 600 to 650 barrels). Some trains are larger, in the range of 100 cars. Essentially, Saskatchewan averages one and change unit trains of crude per day. A unit train is in the range of a mile long.
Each and every one of those trains is exposed to the public each and every day - at every level crossing they pass, in every town they go through. In January, 2012, we reported on a train of crude oil cars being derailed near Oxbow due to a rig worker, driving home on a moonless night at the end of shift, driving into a black train on a rural level crossing. A year later, almost to the day, a grader caused a similar train to derail in Paynton.
These trains run every day, exposed to semi trucks, school buses and soccer-mom minivans. Unlike pipelines, all of them are exposed to the public. And they run day and night, rain or shine, fog, flood or blizzard. One person was killed near the loading facility at Wilmar due to driving into a train in the fog.
Consider this: the capacity of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline is 830,000 barrels per day. To replace that shipping capacity by rail, you would need 17 unit trains, each the size of the one in the Quebec disaster, each and every day. That's 17 mile-long trains rumbling through Saskatchewan to get to the places where Keystone is meant to go.
Now put this in your pipe and smoke it: the Canadian oil sands are expected to increase their production by three million barrels per day. That means an awful lot more trains would have to run through Saskatchewan, Alberta and British Columbia to get to that oil to market.
Each rail car is double walled - with its own, built-in secondary containment. That's why even though a few dozen cars derailed in both near Oxbow and Paynton, only a few hundred barrels leaked. Unfortunately for Lac-Megantic, there is still the possibility of something much more catastrophic.
Pipelines, on the other hand, tend to make puddles - usually small, but sometimes big. And they, too, can have catastrophic blow outs. I personally worked on the repair of a TransCanada mainline gas line blow out near Cabri about 16 years ago.
I spoke to a pipeline safety expert before writing this. According to him, in excess of two-thirds of catastrophic pipeline failures are due to unprofessional excavation techniques - negligent human contact during excavation or ground disturbance. A small percentage, perhaps five per cent on the high side, are due to catastrophic ground shifting. Examples are flooding or seismic events. The remainder are mostly due to internal corrosion.
Both methods of transport have their risks, but on the whole, the exposure to the public is much, much lower with pipelines than rail. They are simply safer.
- Brian Zinchuk is editor of Pipeline News. He can be reached at [email protected]
