TPT September 2013

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Global Marketplace
98 September 2013
Oil and gas
After a rail disaster in Quebec,
a railways vs pipelines debate
flares anew over the transport
of ‘black gold’
Early in the morning of 6 July, a train moving 72 carloads of
crude oil derailed in Lac-Mégantic in the Canadian province
of Quebec. The resulting crash and series of explosions
destroyed 40 houses, forced 2,000 evacuations from the
town, and killed at least 30 people, with 20 or more others
missing and presumed dead days later. The fire was visible
by satellite from space.
While the investigation into the derailment continues, one
thing was immediately clear. The deadly event revived
arguments about the relative safety of the two principal modes
of transporting oil over long distances: rail and pipeline.
Proponents of the Keystone XL pipeline proposal, vigorously
opposed by Canadian and American environmentalists,
believe that the Quebec accident will boost support for the
approval they are seeking from US President Barack Obama.
Framing the controversy in the Christian Science Monitor
(Boston), Jeremy Ravinsky noted a Toronto Star report that
transporting oil by train has become more popular in recent
years due to concerns over pipeline safety. In 2009, according
to the Canadian Railway Association, 500 carloads of oil were
transported across Canada by rail. This year, the estimate is
for 140,000 carloads.
According to the Globe and Mail (also Toronto-based), this
massive increase is at least partly attributable to the fierce
political opposition oil companies face over pipelines, which
entail the risk of oil spills. Projects such as Keystone XL –
which would run from Alberta, in western Canada, to Texas
– offer a faster way to move oil, but the spills they may
create are typically much larger than those resulting from
train accidents. (“Deadly Train Derailment in Quebec Sparks
Debate over Oil Transport,” 8 July)
“In the face of such criticism, numerous oil companies have
switched to rail transport,” wrote Mr Ravinsky. “But many
are questioning that assumption in the aftermath of the Lac-
Mégantic tragedy.”
› A third party – the Canadian government of Prime Minister
Stephen Harper – is certain to figure prominently in the
stand-off now forming. Critics of oil transport by rail point
to faulty monitoring of sufficiently strict regulations on the
transport of hazardous materials by rail. According to the
Montreal Gazette , the rules stipulate inspection of safety
systems before and during every trip. However, Mr Ravinsky
wrote, the government “has taken a back seat on enforcing the
regulations, leaving most of the responsibility to the companies
themselves.”
Avrom Shtern, a spokesman for the Montreal-based Green
Coalition, locates the source of the problem precisely there.
“I think the government, especially after austerity cuts, relies
more and more on the industry to police itself,” Mr Shtern told
the Monitor. “It’s unacceptable. You can’t just write rules and
expect [the railroad companies] to police themselves.”
In Mr Shtern’s view “it is high time” the government came
back into the game and reined in the companies: “They’re not
doing their job,” he said.
› To yet another cohort, the debate over transportation is
moot, given the inherent risks of oil dependency.
Peter Brown, a professor of geography at McGill University
in Montreal, told Monitor guest blogger Daniel J Graeber (9
July), “Whether we transport by rail or pipeline we need to get
away from an oil economy, which the Harper government is
completely oblivious to.”
The Canadian broadcaster CTV observed that the 6 July
derailment is not the first accident involving oil transport
by rail in the country this year. In May, a train derailed near
the town of Jansen in rural Saskatchewan, spilling 24,000
gallons of oil. In June, 3,400 gallons of diesel fuel were spilled
in Frontenac, another town in Quebec not far from Lac-
Mégantic.
As Americans and Canadians
fume, an unsightly mound of high-
carbon, high-sulphur ‘petcoke’
keeps on growing in Detroit
“In something resembling a bottle return program, Detroit’s
enormous petroleum coke pile, a byproduct of Canadian oil
sands, is making its way back to Canada.”
The reference, by Ian Austen of the New York Times, was to
a three-story-high, uncovered, blocklong black mound on the
waterfront of Detroit, Michigan, that for months has upset that
city’s residents as well as others across the river in Windsor,
Ontario. Owned by Koch Carbon, a company controlled by
American industrialists – the prominent conservative brothers
Charles and David Koch – the detritus is a byproduct of
The crude oil caused explosions that killed 30 people in Quebec