The number of rail cars transporting crude oil and petroleum products through B.C. jumped almost 200 per cent last year, reinforcing the resolve of municipalities to prevent a disastrous accident similar to the derailment in Lac-Mégantic in Quebec last July.
Transport Canada figures provided at The Vancouver Sun's request show just under 3,400 oil and petroleum rail-car shipments in B.C. last year, compared with about 1,200 in 2012 and 50 in 2011.
The figures come a week after The Sun revealed that train derailments jumped 20 per cent to 110 incidents last year in B.C., the highest level in five years.
Railway companies on Monday provided few details on routes or destinations of these growing numbers of oil railcars.
CN Rail spokesman Mark Hallman said the company transports crude oil to New Westminster, where it is interchanged with two U.S. railroads, and also to an undisclosed company in Vancouver.
"CN does not disclose the routes it uses to move commodities on its network for security reasons, and does not identify its customers or origins of traffic owing to commercial confidentiality."
He did confirm that none of the crude oil CN transports in B.C. is exported overseas, noting that no facility exists on the West Coast to transfer crude oil from tank cars to shipping vessels.
Hallman explained that major railways are required to provide municipalities with aggregated information, presented by quarter, on the nature and volume of dangerous goods transported by rail through municipalities.
"There is no regulatory requirement for railways to give advance notice of the dangerous commodities transported through municipalities."
CP Rail's Ed Greenberg was less forthcoming, saying: "I do not have breakdowns on type of traffic we are moving, or routing information."
The Chevron refinery in Burnaby built a facility last year to specifically offload oil delivered by CP along the same tracks used by the West Coast Express commuter train.
Chevron spokesman Jorge Marco refused to disclose how much oil is coming to the refinery: "That's competitive information. I can't disclose that to you."
On Dec. 21, 2013, CP crews at the refinery reported the derailment of an empty rail car off the end of the tracks after its crude oil had been offloaded.
"It was a very minor incident," Marco said.
"Should people be worried?" asked Susie Gimse, a director of the Squamish-Lillooet Regional District who also sits on a national rail safety working group through the Federation of Canadian Municipalities. "There's always potential for things to go wrong.
"For us, the key is ensuring that the right measures are in place to ensure that doesn't happen, that cars meet a certain standard, that there are good emergency response plans, that there are good risk assessments done, that all the measures required to keep people safe are in place."
With rail shipments of oil and petroleum products only expected to increase in B.C. in the absence of construction of a new pipeline, local politicians fear the consequences of a major oil-related train derailment or crash in the region.
On April 8, White Rock Mayor Wayne Baldwin wrote to federal Transport Minister Lisa Raitt to express concerns about increased traffic on the BNSF Railway line through his seaside community of 20,000. Currently, there are 15 to 20 trains per day (up from two to five in 1992), of which four are Amtrak passenger trains and the rest transport trains, including for dangerous goods, he said.
He said BNSF Railway in recent months has started hauling 100- to 120-car trains of oil from North Dakota through the community.
Baldwin wrote that it is "unacceptable practice" to haul such volumes of goods "through one of the most densely populated municipalities in Metro Vancouver."
He noted that BNSFR has a spur line running north from Sumas Crossing which it could use to connect to CN/CP lines for dangerous goods.
BNSF spokesman Gus Melonas said from Seattle that company officials will meet in White Rock next week with municipal officials to discuss rail safety issues. Asked about BNSF oil shipments north into Canada, he would only say: "We don't reveal commodity flows to the public."
On July 6, 2013, a runaway train of 72 tank cars owned by Montreal, Maine & Atlantic Railway and loaded with crude oil crashed in Lac-Mégantic, killing 47 people and destroying half the downtown area.
On April 23 this year, Raitt announced that about 5,000 of the least crash-resistant DOT-111 tankers were to be removed from Canadian railways within 30 days. Another 65,000 must be removed or retrofitted within three years.
Chevron's Marco said about 25 per cent of the leased rail cars delivering crude oil to the Burnaby refinery will be replaced as required within that three-year period.
Raitt also announced, in part, that Transport Canada will issue a "protective direction" requiring emergency response assistance plans for crude oil, gasoline, diesel, aviation fuel, and ethanol.
Industry is required to submit the response plans for approval within 150 days.
The federal Transportation Safety Board is reviewing the adequacy of Raitt's measures to improve rail safety and is expected to deliver its findings soon.
CN and CP say the companies support the federal measures, but noted that the vast majority of tank cars are owned by rail customers or by railway rolling stock leasing companies. They add that the railways are obliged to haul all tank cars that meet existing regulatory requirements, including older DOT-111 tank cars that meet existing regulatory requirements.
The railways have also introduced a rate structure to act as an incentive to encourage shippers of crude oil to work toward an upgraded tank car standard.
When asked how many of those 3,400 rail cars to B.C. are DOT-111 models due for removal or retrofitting, Greenberg said: "Tank cars are shipper supplied, so you would need to go to the shippers or Transport Canada for numbers."
On Oct. 19, 2013, oil-filled rail cars bound for a transloading facility in Langley — and eventually the Chevron refinery — were part of a CN train that crashed and burned in Gainford, Alta. Of 134 rail cars, four carried crude oil and nine carried liquefied petroleum gas derailed, sparking a dramatic explosion. No one was injured.
A Joint Review Panel has recommended that the Enbridge Northern Gateway project proceed with 209 conditions, while Kinder Morgan's plan to twin its pipeline to Burnaby remains under review by the National Energy Board.
On Jan. 23 this year, the Transportation Safety Board said: "The amount of crude oil now being shipped by rail in North America is staggering. According to the rail industry, in Canada in 2009, there were only 500 carloads of crude oil shipped by rail; in 2013, there were 160,000 carloads. In the U.S. in 2009, there were 10,800 carloads; and in 2013, there were 400,000 carloads."
The board added: "The Lac-Mégantic derailment and other recent rail accidents demonstrate that, when accidents involving unit trains (or blocks of tank cars) transporting large volumes of flammable materials occur, there is significant risk for loss of life and damage to communities and the environment."
