Just like commercial airlines don’t make headlines for the thousands of flights that reach their destination safely each day, you won’t see much media coverage of the stellar safety rate achieved in all segments of North America’s oil and natural gas industry. But it’s a reality with direct bearing on public policy. The continents liquid […]
Oil industry going to court to fight for its rights
America’s largest energy trade association is suing the US government, contending its timeline for upgrading oil tank cars for freight trains isn’t realistic and, in some cases, too expensive. In its suit filed on May 11 in the US District Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, the American Petroleum Institute (API) asked the […]
New testing standards set for crude being transported by rail in the U.S.
The oil industry’s lead trade group has come up with new standards for testing and classifying crude shipped by rail. As with earlier orders from the American government, the industry’s standards generally leave it to individual companies to decide how often to test crude in order to gauge its danger. Hazardous-materials shipments are supposed to […]
Not the way to secure social licence to operate
When it comes to oil and gas spills Colorado is on the way to a record breaking year. To date there have been 467 spills of varying sizes in the the state. The high was set last year at 575. At a rate of two a day this year that number could be easily topped. […]
Time to phase out old rail cars
The Daily Journal is reporting the oil industry and the railroads are giving U.S. regulators a plan to phase out a type of older tank car connected to fiery accidents, including the one a year ago in Quebec that killed 47 people. The publisher of the story was talking on a condition of anonymity to […]
Comment: Fox Guarding Henhouse
How did it get missed for the last ten years?” That was the question Deborah Hersman, chair of the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), posed to a panel of industry representatives back in April about how the rail industry had missed the fact that Bakken oil is more explosive than traditional crude oil. “How do we […]
Fracking standards in U.S. may be too little too late
The American Petroleum Institute now has a set of standards for how companies operate in communities that are home to shale drilling sites. The goal is to ease fears regarding fracking around the U.S. The plan includes using what the industry refers to as “best practices” gleaned from over six decades of fracking experience. API […]