21 / 32
National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB)
Chairman Deborah Hersman said in a statement
released in 2014, “The large-scale shipments of
crude oil by rail simply didn’t exist 10 years ago,
and our safety regulations need to catch up with
this new reality.”
Hersman’s contention that safety
regulations often lag behind commercial
progress likely resonates with pipeline operators.
Even as North America teeters on the brink of
becoming the world’s largest energy supplier,
PHMSA has announced new safety rules
around pipeline integrity verification and
positive material identification. Mike Kirkwood,
director, market development – transmission,
for T.D. Williamson (TDW), says that the
shared safety goals of railroad and pipeline
operators are more meaningful than any
competition between the two.
“This shouldn’t be an ‘us-versus-them’
scenario,” Kirkwood says. “There’s a place
for both pipelines and rail in the transport of
energy. And safety and the environment are
paramount to both. We’re all working toward
the same goal, which is to create and ensure a
safer energy industry.”
Ed Greenberg, media relations chair for the
American Association of Railroads (AAR), agrees.
“Although freight rail and pipelines are
completely different modes of transportation,
both industries share the same commitment to the
safe movement of this product,” Greenberg says.
Safety issues are also at the heart of
arguments people are using to promote their
political agendas, Kirkwood says. For example,
the pro-Keystone XL faction demonizes rail
because of recent accidents, while the anti-
Keystone crowd says that with nearly 225,000
km (140,000 mi) of railroad lines in place to
ferry crude oil across North America there’s
no need to endanger the environment with
additional pipelines.
The irony is not lost on the Fraser Institute’s
Green.
“The market is saying, ‘we want pipelines,’ but
pipeline protestors are diverting more oil to rail
than would otherwise be traveling that way, based
on an operator’s assessment of risk and cost,” he
says. “The people who are protesting one mode
are promoting overuse of another mode.”
(AP Photo/Matt Rourke)
19
I N N O V AT I O N S • V O L . V I I I , N O. 1 • 2 0 1 6
CONTINUED ON PAGE 27