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North Dakota to implement conditioning standard for crude oil transport
If this protocol is implemented as proposed to condition the Bakken Crude for shipment; does this not also effect the specifications for the tank cars that will make the rail hauls?
How about a different photo from the generic crude oil train we see story after story?!
About time. This in my opinion will have a bigger positive safety impact than the tank car standards that are moving along at a glacial pace.
i wonder how the oil producers are going to do this. Will they pump more natural gas and lighter hydrocarbons into the atmosphere or will they be required to contain the methane, ethane, etc which was found in the Lac-Megantic crude and contributed to the disaster?
It seems likely to me that if the producers are required to separate the “light ends” from the heavier crude, they’ll collect and sell the fraction. Producers in the WV/OH/PA formation do so now, and transport light ends 1500 miles to northern Alberta, to be used as a diluent for tar-sands oil. (According to a report in “Trains” several months ago, the diluent loosens up the tar-sand crude enough to transport it either by pipeline or trankcar.)
This C3-C4 fraction is also sold as LPG, or upon further refining as raw material for making plastics, etc. So it has economic value. The question will be whether that value will support more extensive refining, either in ND/Alberta or LA/TX. If it’s cheap enough in the Bakken, there might well be unit trains of light petroleum headed south.