Estonut wrote:ghostjmf wrote:BiT:
When a truck crashes the oil leak is much less. Ditto for rail crash unless the entire load catches fire.
How many trucks need to be on the road to transport as much volume as the pipeline?
Regarding a similarly-sized pipeline (DAPL):
"Assuming the average oil tanker truck is capable of holding about 220 barrels of oil, the transportation of
the initial capacity of the proposed Project (450,000 bpd), would require a total of 2,045 (450,000/220)
full trucks to depart the proposed tank terminals daily, and more than 85 (2,045/24) trucks would have to
be filled every hour with a 24-hour/day operation. Time spent in transit, loading/offloading, and
additional time for maintenance would add to the number of trucks needed to offset for the DAPL Project.
For a trucking mode, an increase in daily truck traffic would lead to an increase in the degradation of public
roads as well as contribute to the noise pollution adjacent to the roads. For both truck and rail modes, an
increase in exhaust would be anticipated due to truck and locomotive combustion. An increase in air
pollution would also be anticipated from potential releases during the filling operations for trucks or rail
cars."
For rail cars:
"Assuming a carrying capacity of 600 barrels per car, a total of 750 rail cars would be required to depart
the tank terminal daily to transport 450,000 barrels of crude oil to its final destination. Loading and
offloading 750 rail cars in a day would require servicing more than 31 rail cars per hour. With an
assumption of 125 rail cars per train, six trains would have to depart the tank terminal every day. With
10 to 12 trains currently leaving the state per day carrying Bakken crude, the DAPL Project would represent
a 50 to 60% increase in the number of trains transporting crude oil out of the state, likely exacerbating
issues with delays (Horwath and Owings, 2014).
Rail operations on the scale of the DAPL Project do not exist in the U.S. An oil-by-rail facility designed to
handle an average of 360,000 bpd has been proposed in the Port of Vancouver, Washington. Known as
the Vancouver Energy proposal, the project would be the largest rail terminal in the country (Florip, 2014).
A rail transportation alternative to handle the volumes of the DAPL Project would require the design and
construction of 125 to 158% of that of the Vancouver Energy proposal. A facility of this size would incur
its own environmental consequences.
From a safety standpoint, railroad transport consistently reports a substantially higher number of
transportation accidents than pipelines (DOT, 2005). A series of major accidents taking place in 2013 to
2014 in Canada and the U.S. has heightened concern about the risks involved in shipping crude by rail
(Fritelli, 2014).
Increases in rail traffic necessary to transport the volume of crude oil proposed by the DAPL project would
increase the emissions of combustion products due the use of diesel engines which could have an adverse
impact on air quality in the region. This alternative would also directly affect communities along utilized
rail lines by increasing noise and creating transportation delays due to the substantial increasing rail traffic
across railroad crossings of roads."
