Oregon officials seek to suspend oil trains after derailment

Following the Union Pacific derailment in Mosier, Brown called for a temporary moratorium on oil trains in the Columbia River Gorge until it’s confirmed the rails are safe. Many more trains would be likely to travel through the Gorge if Vancouver Energy’s plans to build the nation’s largest oil terminal here are approved.

The first part of 2016 shows a 31-percent uptick from the same period in 2015.

In the accident, a Union Pacific train carrying crude oil derailed, burst into flames and spilled crude along Oregon’s scenic Columbia River gorge.

Rail became an increasingly popular way to transport the surge in US oil production this decade especially because some pipelines have been blocked by state and federal regulators.

“At a time of acute concern about toxins in our water and in our air, we do not need to add to that list”, Hales said.

“Until the underlying cause of the bolt failures is understood and, a means of detecting this defect is developed, we request a moratorium on running unit oil trains over sections of track that contain track fasteners of this material within the state of Oregon”, said the administrator for the state transportation department in the letter first reported by The Oregonian. Since the incident, Union-Pacific has increased the frequency of its inspections.

But in the wake of the Mosier wreck, environmental and other agencies are calling for the industry to change, though it’s unclear how that would affect the burgeoning oil-train business in the Tideflats.

Tom Fuller, ODOT’s director of communications, also asked, given that neither ODOT nor Union Pacific spotted the broken bolts, “Where else might this exist. just waiting to have a derailment?”

Hundreds more rail cars have released smaller amounts of crude following less-severe mishaps.

Thanks to a measure passed by the Washington Legislature, Washington is in the midst of implementing stricter rules surrounding oil transport. A preliminary report faulted broken, and relatively new, track bolts for the wreck, and OR transportation officials wrote that the broken bolts might have been “insufficient for these types of loads”.

When Inslee signed the law, he called it a “solid step forward”.

More than 12 of the 96 oil cars derailed, sparking a fire and forcing evacuations.

“With so many people in Portland living near the tracks, we can’t close our eyes to the risks of these trains and hope that we, again, get lucky – if you can call it that”, Kafoury said.

Experts said it was unlikely federal authorities would enforce ban such as OR requested. The new rule includes enhanced tank auto standards, requiring older tank cars carrying oil to be retrofitted, new braking standards and reduced operating speeds.

U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., is urging the U.S. Department of Transportation to set a standard for volatility of crude oil.