SEVERAL PEOPLE INJURED AFTER DISTRACTED DRIVER CAUSES FIERY I-5 CRASH IN SEATTLE, WA

MAY 5, 2015

SEATTLE, WA

All lanes of northbound Interstate 5 were closed through downtown Seattle for nearly an hour Tuesday after a distracted pickup driver triggered a fiery crash, the Washington State Patrol reports.

Emergency personnel responded to the scene, near Pine Street, at about 8:15 a.m. after receiving reports of a serious three-vehicle crash.
There were reports of at least one injury. Medics transported a 67-year-old male driver from the crash scene to Harborview Medical Center as a precaution.
Trooper Chris Webb said the pickup driver was heading north on I-5 when he dropped his cell phone and looked down to pick it up. When he looked back up, traffic had stopped and he was unable to avoid crashing into the car in front of him. A third vehicle also was struck.
The pickup burst into flames after the impact, but the driver was saved by an off-duty firefighter and state transportation worker who helped pull him from the burning vehicle. Footage from DOT cameras showed smoke and flames spewing from the pickup in the immediate aftermath of the crash.
"These scenes get really chaotic," Webb said. "In this case, we’re talking distracted driving. A lot of people look at distracted driving just as cell phone use, but it actually goes beyond that. Are you able to drive the car and multi-task?"
An eyewitness, Kyle Goodwin, says he had just gotten off the bus when he saw a thick plume of black smoke rising from the freeway.
"It was a pretty crazy sight. The truck was on fire, and I thought it was going to blow up," he says. "It was completely black – like rubber smoke. So it smelled really bad, too. ... It was kind of hectic and hard to tell what was going on."
A seven-mile backup had formed by 8:30 a.m. as all vehicles were detoured off the freeway at Olive Way.
Three northbound lanes of I-5 were reopened at about 9 a.m., and the backup slowly began to clear.

Source: komonews.com

BSEE Launches Near-miss Reporting System at OTC

Published in Oil Industry News on Wednesday, 6 May 2015

Brian Salerno, the director of U. S. Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) made two announcements during a press conference at the Offshore Technology Conference yesterday, on May 5, about reducing the risks associated with offshore oil and gas operations.

First, Director Salerno announced the launch of the SafeOCS program, an initiative aimed at collecting and analyzing “near miss” data. Second, he released BSEE’s first-ever Annual Report, which presents the agency’s analysis of offshore activities, trends, indicators, incidents, and other key data points, said BSEE.

The Bureau also said that it is working to identify all available methods to learn more about the causes of all serious offshore incidents. At the conference, BSEE formally launched their SafeOCS, an Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) near-miss reporting system, with the activation of the program’s reporting line, 1-844-738-9OCS. According to BSEE, the program’s official website will be available next month.

Brian Salerno said: “I strongly encourage participation in the system by the entire offshore community as a way to help improve the overall safety posture of the industry. Shared awareness of safety trends will better equip everyone to focus on the right things and thereby drive down the risk of serious incidents.”
BSEE explains that SafeOCS is a voluntary and completely confidential system, in which the Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS) will collect and analyze near-miss reports submitted by individual OCS workers, companies, and others. The aggregated data will be shared with the general public through the BTS website, and used to identify safety trends and increase understanding of offshore risk.

The BSEE 2014 Annual Report summarizes oil and gas activities from the past years, presents comparisons to previous years, and describes BSEE’s analysis of trends. The Annual Report also outlines current BSEE initiatives and the agency’s plans to reduce risk in the coming year.

“Part of managing risk is monitoring the trends we are seeing offshore, and gauging the effectiveness of our approach. We are pleased to see that some of the most serious incidents offshore, including fatalities, are decreasing. But our work is far from done. For example, the Annual Report observes an increase in loss of well control events. That’s troubling, given the potential for such incidents to have grave consequences,” Salerno concluded.
Source: www.offshoreenergytoday.com

U.S. Shale Firms, New Oil Swingers, Start Talking about a $70 Cap on Oil Prices

Published in Oil Industry News on Wednesday, 6 May 2015

U.S. shale drillers, widely seen as having taken over from OPEC as the swing suppliers to the world, quickly adjusting production as prices ebb and flow, may have just put a $70 a barrel lid on oil.

Just months after slashing spending and cutting back on rigs in response to a 60 percent price rout, major domestic producers including bellwether EOG Resources Inc and top Bakken producer Whiting Petroleum Corp are already starting to talk about the price at which they would ramp up production.

Others, such as Devon Energy Corp and Noble Energy Inc., are pumping more oil than expected this year after the industry's deepening drive for more efficient and productive wells yielded better-than-expected results.

For some analysts, these are signs of a new price ceiling forming in oil markets and serve warning to traders that a new wave of shale supplies could be quickly unleashed if crude pushes much higher. For others they suggest that a second deep price slump may be looming as soon as next year.

"If oil prices recover and stabilize around $65 WTI, EOG can resume strong double-digit growth," the company's chief executive, Bill Thomas, told analysts on a conference call on Tuesday.

Jim Volker, Whiting's chief executive, said last week, "You'd probably see us put a couple of rigs back" if U.S. crude reached $70 a barrel. Pioneer Natural Resources Co told Reuters last month it may add new rigs in June if oil prices improve a bit, but didn't specify a price.

The comments provide the first insight of a possible new ceiling for oil markets, forcing traders to shift gears after months of scrutinizing fracking firms for signs of deep spending cuts that would curb oversupply and stop the price rout.

The turnaround has arrived more quickly, and more violently, than many expected: U.S. crude oil futures have surged 45 percent since hitting a six-year low in mid-March, topping $60 a barrel on Tuesday for the first time since Dec. 11 - just weeks after the pivotal meeting at which the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries agreed to refrain from cutting production.

The comments may also reinforce the view that the U.S. shale industry is the new "swing" producer, able to ramp production up and down quickly enough to temper the peaks and troughs that have long afflicted the oil market.

Unlike the OPEC of old, however, it takes shale drillers months, not days, to turn the taps back on, raising the risk of a "longer and messier" - and more volatile - period of adjustment for markets, according to Mike Wittner, global head of oil research at Societe Generale.

THE DANGER OF HOPE

As oil prices spiraled down more than 60 percent late last year and early into 2015, oil analysts and traders struggled to figure out when - and at what price - shale firms would cut back drilling, curtailing an unprecedented production boom that has nearly doubled U.S. output in five years.

At under $50 a barrel, those cuts seemed to appear, although production has been more resilient than some firms expected.

Devon said Tuesday that it pumped a record 272,000 barrels per day (bpd) of crude in the first quarter, beyond the top limit of its forecasts. It said full-year output may rise by as much as 35 percent, much more than expected.

Now, traders are considering a ceiling for prices - and starting to ponder the perils of potentially premature optimism.

"If prices at $65 to $70 get shale to turn on, it will exacerbate or prolong the oversupply, and send prices down into another down leg," Bob McNally, president of the Rapidan Group said. "If we build a new ceiling at $70, we may have to find a new floor, lower than $45 in January.”

Anadarko Petroleum Corp's CEO, Al Walker, expressed "some concerns that as we achieve higher prices we could see activity increase, and prices, unfortunately, could suffer as a result of higher production." He did not specify a price that would encourage the company to drill more actively.

For some executives, it's better not to talk about it.

"I will tell you - everybody wants to know at what oil price would you spend more," said Tim Leach, CEO of Concho, which raised its production guidance a few percentage points on Monday. "And that's not really the way we think about it."
Source: www.reuters.com

CONSTRUCTION WORKER INJURED AFTER HE FELL FROM SCAFFOLDING OFF ROUTE 4 OVERPASS ONTO I-55 IN ILLINOIS

MAY 5, 2015

STAUNTON, ILL. (KMOV.COM)

Emergency crews responded to the Route 4 overpass of Interstate 55 in Macoupin County, Illinois after a construction worker fell off of the overpass onto concrete near the shoulder.

News 4 crews saw an ARCH medical helicopter land at the scene around 4:40 Tuesday. Authorities said the man fell onto some concrete near the shoulder before the wood scaffolding he was working on fell onto his head. He suffered non-life threatening injuries.

Both lanes of the interstate were closed for a period of time. Traffic was redirected onto Route 4.

WAR AND BUFFET PROMISES TO FIX HIS TRAIN DISASTERS AFTER LATEST BNSF OIL TRAIN CABOOM IN NORTH DAKOTA. MEANWHILE, HAVE A COKE ON HIM

MAY 6, 2015

BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — A train that derailed and caught fire early Wednesday in rural North Dakota was hauling crude from the state's oil patch, raising questions about whether new state standards intended to reduce the volatility of such shipments are sufficient.

The six tank cars that exploded into flames were a model slated to be phased out or retrofitted by 2020 under a federal rule announced last week.

It's the fifth fiery accident since February involving that type of tank car, and industry critics responded to the latest with calls for them to be taken off the tracks immediately to prevent further fires.

No injuries were reported in the derailment of the 109-car BNSF railway train at around 7:30 a.m. That prompted the evacuation of the 20-resident town of Heimdal, about 115 miles northeast of Bismarck.

The Health Department was monitoring air quality and advising people not to breathe in the smoke. The danger from the smoke was mainly the particles it contains such as ash, not toxic chemicals, State Environmental Health Chief Dave Glatt said. Rain might have helped wash some of the particles out of the smoke, though it might also keep the plume closer to the ground and more likely to be encountered by people, he said.

In the immediate aftermath of the accident, BNSF vice president Mike Trevino said, the intensity of the blaze prevented firefighters from directly attacking the flames. As of Wednesday evening, two cars out of six continued to burn, he said.

State officials initially reported 10 cars on fire but later revised that to six. They were hauling Bakken oil loaded in the Tioga area, said Jeff Zent, spokesman for Gov. Jack Dalrymple.

The six cars that caught fire were carrying approximately 180,000 gallons of oil, Trevino said. Investigators haven't been able to get close enough to the spill to determine how much of the oil burned off, spilled or remained in the cars, authorities said.

Curt Benson, a 68-year-old retired sheriff who alerted authorities, said he was getting ready for the day when the explosion outside town rattled his house. With the large number of oil trains that come through the community each day, he figured that was the cause.

"I got in my car, still in my underwear, had shaving cream on my face, and drove down there," he said.

There was no immediate word on the cause.

Industry representatives and state officials said oil companies have been complying with a standard that went into effect April 1 requiring them to remove propane, butane and other gases that occur in North Dakota crude to reduce the chance of tank cars catching fire. There was nothing to immediately indicate a violation of that rule with the train involved in Wednesday's accident.

The crude in the tank cars was being shipped by the Hess Corporation, and regulators were seeking details on tests of the crude done by the Texas-based company prior to the accident, said Federal Railroad Administrator Sarah Feinberg.

Hess representatives did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

North Dakota officials said the new standard makes the volatility of treated oil comparable to unleaded gasoline.

Members of Congress, who have called for a stricter standard to be imposed at the federal level, said Wednesday's accident underscored that more needs to be done to prevent oil train fires that could cause a major disaster in an urban area. In 2013, a train loaded with crude from the Bakken region derailed and exploded in the small town of Lac-Megantic, Quebec, killing 47 people.

"With trains carrying this highly-explosive material by homes, schools and businesses each day, we need a strong national volatility standard as opposed to a patchwork of state laws," said U.S. Rep. Nita Lowey of New York, the ranking Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee.

Tessa Sandstrom with the North Dakota Petroleum Council said safety efforts should instead focus on preventing accidents through enhanced inspections of tracks and railroad equipment.

The rail line through Heimdal runs next to an intermittent waterway known as the Big Slough, which drains into the James River about 15 miles downstream near Bremen, North Dakota.

There were preliminary indications that some oil from the derailed cars got into Big Slough, but it will be difficult to verify until the fire dies down, Glatt said. In a similar incident outside Casselton, North Dakota, in December 2013, almost all of the spilled oil was consumed in the fire, he said.

The Federal Railroad Administration, the National Transportation Safety Board and the Environmental Protection Agency all sent investigators. The EPA planned to gauge any contamination to waterways in the vicinity, spokesman Rich Mylott said.

Since 2006, the U.S. and Canada have seen at least 24 oil train accidents involving a fire, derailment or significant amount of fuel spilled. Wednesday's derailment comes after the Department of Transportation announced a rule Friday to toughen construction standards for tens of thousands of tank cars that haul oil and other flammable liquids.

Feinberg said the Heimdal accident was "yet another reminder" of the need for changes that have been resisted by the oil industry, which has said it could take more than a decade to get unsafe tank cars replaced or off the tracks. She said federal officials planned additional steps to improve oil train safety but offered no specifics.

The cars that derailed were constructed under a 2011 voluntary rail industry standard intended to make them tougher than older cars that were long known to pose a safety risk. But the new cars, each carrying 30,000 gallons of fuel, have proved equally dangerous.

Roughly 22,000 of the new cars that are used to haul crude oil lack an extra layer of protection to shield them against fires or explosions.

The easiness with which these trains derail and explode makes it clear that very little can be done to prevent these explosions and fires.  The railroad industry is a "cheapskate" type of business.  They do not make much money (so they claim) and they have been under-invested in infrastructure improvements for many-many-many years.  The situation is helpless.  Besides, it costs much less money to them to deal with these disasters and explosions and fires than to improve the railroad and tank car safety.

The oil and gas industry is another "cheapskate" type of business, despite the amounts of profits they make.  They always spend the minimum amount on safety, as it affects their bottom line by lowering their profits without increasing oil or gas production.  

Two cheapskates (railroads  and oil and gas industries) come together and we have multiple of explosions and fires and property damage.  Stay tuned, as things will not improve by any measurable degree.