BNSF Railway adds new safety rules for crude oil trains
BNSF Railway has started taking additional safety measures for crude oil shipments because of four recent high-profile derailments in the U.S. and Canada, the railroad said Monday.
Under the changes, BNSF is slowing down crude oil trains to 35 mph in cities with more than 100,000 people and increasing track inspections near waterways. The Fort Worth-based railroad, owned by Berkshire Hathaway, also is stepping up efforts to find and repair defective wheels before they can cause derailments.
BNSF spokesman Michael Trevino said the additional safety efforts were imposed last week in response to recent derailments, including one involving a BNSF train earlier this month near Galena, Ill., and the Mississippi River.
“The recent incidents involving crude trains, including our own event in Galena, has led us to believe that we must take further action,” Trevino said.
In February, a 100-car Canadian National Railway train hauling crude oil and petroleum distillates derailed in a remote part of Ontario, Canada. And less than two days later, a 109-car CSX oil train derailed and caught fire near Mount Carbon, West Virginia, leaking oil into a Kanawha River tributary and burning a house to its foundation.
Railroads hauled 493,126 tank cars of crude oil last year, up from 407,761 in 2013 and just 9,500 cars in 2008 before boom took off in the Bakken region of North Dakota and Montana as well as in Canada. According to filings with the state last year, up to four trains carrying Bakken crude pass through Fort Worth each week.
Trevino said BNSF has already doubled the frequency of track inspections near waterways; now it will inspect the track 2.5 times more often than regulations require.
BNSF, like the other major freight railroads, uses a system of trackside detectors to identify wheels and axles that are beginning to fail. Trevino said the railroad will begin removing flawed wheels sooner to help prevent derailments.
These new BNSF efforts go beyond the voluntary measures railroads agreed to last year when the industry pledged to slow crude oil trains to 40 mph in metropolitan areas and report route information to emergency responders.
This story was originally published March 30, 2015 at 6:04 PM with the headline "BNSF Railway adds new safety rules for crude oil trains."