With petroleum becoming scarcer every day, I wonder if the Railroads stand much of a chance against more fuel efficient barge shipping in the Middle and Eastern parts of the U.S. I suppose one thing I could see coming is the emergence of a carfloat network throughout the Midwest and East Coast where loaded rail cars spend most of their journey on barge and then rails move them short or medium distances from origin to barge and from barge to final destination. In any case I’m pretty sure there will be a lot of coal moving from the PRB to West Coast ports to fuel rapidly growing China. Any thoughts or ideas?
I’ll leave the answer about the rail-barge network to those who know more than me. However, China has enough coal of their own to support their growing economy.
Don’t bet your retirement income on it!
China may have enough coal of their own, but the ability to get it out of the ground and process it is not quite there yet. But don’t get me wrong, it will be soon…they’re catching up fast.
Brian
Nonsense!!!
Let’s begin with the fact that most rivers are not navagable for barge traffic. Rivers tend to become impassable when they freeze. Rivers don’t go close coal producing regions, and loading and unloading costs don’t support the fuel savings (if any). Furthermore, barge speed is terrible compared to rail. The railroads are not in any danger of losing market share to barges.
It is also rather doubtful that we will be exporting coal in any real quantity. We are much more likely to export grain, other food stuffs, lumber, and other renewable resources.
Fuel efficiency of barges vs rails is relative to which river system and rail corridor you are talking about. The oft repeated adage of barges moving a ton of cargo 500 miles per gallon of fuel, while rails move a ton 212 miles per gallon, that is extremely old data.
On the Mississippi River system, barge lines can get as high as 1200 ton/miles per gallon, while on the Columbia-Snake River System barge lines are recording up to 1800 ton/miles per gallon, and short sea barging is getting well over 2500 ton miles per gallon. It is all related to the depth of draft, the deeper the draft, the more cargo per area of barge, the higher the fuel efficiency. If I remember correctly the Mississippi system has a max of 12 ft south of Cairo and 10 ft north of Cairo, the Columbia-Snake system has a max draft of 14 ft when dredged, and short sea shipping has pretty much unlimited draft relatively speaking.
Meanwhile, rail fuel efficiency is also much improved, with some BNSF grain trains getting 1500 ton/miles net from Montana to Portland. Railroad fuel efficiency is related to the number of and steepness of upgrades, and the type of train being run. Unit trains get the highest fuel efficiencies, carload and hotshot intermodal some of the lowest fuel efficiencies.
Therefore, the prospect of railroads transfering cargo from rail to barge is probably not related to fuel efficiency, more likely such moves would be more related to rail congestion. Most waterway systems have excess capacity, while the railroads are quickly approaching maxed capacity.
It should also be noted that transloading aggregates and such from rail to barge is relatively cheap compared to other commodities.
So Dave, what I hear you saying is, from a fuel efficiency perspective, barges do have a slight advantage over rail. Out of curiosity, what is the differential between up stream and down stream fuel consumption per ton mile?
Part of that fuel efficiency difference has to be attributed to speed. Can barges make much more than 20 MPH down stream?
The fuel efficiency advantage for barges is not an industry average, so it’s more in the vein of fuel efficiency potential. There are other operating considerations that would take precidence over maximizing fuel efficiency, such as running barge tows that fit the locks (as is done on the Columbia-Snake system) as opposed to running barge tow that have to be broken up at each lock (as is done on the Mississippi). Limiting barge tows to lock size cuts down on fuel efficiency potential, but increases average speed of the trip. The fuel efficiency potential of the Columbia-Snake system operators therefore is much higher than the 1800 ton/mile per gallon max recorded by Foss a few years ago, but the Columbia-Snake operators strive to make it from Lewiston to Portland in under 48 hours, so no larger-than-lock barge tows have been tried e.g. they keep the number of barges at around 4 per tow, while Mississippi barge tows can number in the 20’s. Also, most barge tows are not specific to one commodity, but will typically include a couple grain barges, a container barge, and either a wood chip barge or petroleum barge, so they typically don’t max out the tonnage potential.
Suprisingly, this 48 hour window on the Columbia-Snake system is time competitive with current rail transit times, so up until the time that all but Hanjin pulled out of Portland, container on barge services were thriving. Once the Columbia channel is dredged to allow the larger container ships to return to Portland, this COB service should pick up again.
The average speed of
What navigable river runs anywher near the Powder River Basin? Why would you load it on a train for only half of the journey to an ocean port, transload to a barge downriver to transload again to an ocean going ship? Any gain in fuel efficiency would be wiped out in increased labor (two or three train crews, at least two tug crews, and two transloading crews vs three or four two-person train crews). Speed would be another factor, but most bulk commodities are not time-sensitive. Someone else mentioned freezing, will that make your shipping method seasonal? Lastly, as someone else mentioned China has more coal than it can use, why would it buy it from the U.S. where labor costs are much higher? In short, unless something radical happens, you will not see PRB coal going to China. As for shipping PRB coal by barge, it only happens at a few power plants that are actually next to a navigable river. I haven’t heard them crowing about lower shipping costs.
I don’t see much of a market for rail cars on barges, either. Again additional crews and labor wont’ justify the fuel savings. Just how big a network can barges have in the U.S.? It would take a change in federal transportation policy to be even remotely viable.
Hmmmm. You know, these facts are actually out there, and you don’t have to just pretend you know these things.
The United States is the largest coal producer in the world (with production over 1 billion tons) and one of a handful of major coal exporters.
This year, January through June, the United States exported 24,932,451 tons of coal, 8.4 million tons to Canada, 2.2 million tons to South America, 10.3 million tons to Europe, 3.4 million tons to Asia, and 700,000 tons to Africa.
In 2004, North American U.S. coal exports were valued at $278,416,027, South American coal exports were valued at $148,039,247, European coal exports were valued at $472,702,281, to Asia, $382,012,018, Africa, $40,965,853.
In terms of tonnage, we export huge quantities of coal.
For the year 2004, a total of 48 million tons of coal were exported, compared to only 25.8 million tons of wheat.
Coal is a cheap commodity, however, and the total export value of coal in 2004 was $1.3 billion, whereas the value of the export wheat crop was $6.6 billion.
Best regards, Michael Sol
Michael, thanks for doing the research and finding the numbers. I confess to being lazy and taking an educated guess about the exports. Interesting about the tonnage vs dollars. I had no idea that the tonnage was that great, too bad it isn’t worth more.
This raises an interesting point, though off topic, that being we import so much energy in the form of oil, but can’t come close to exporting that much in the form coal. The best use we have for coal is generating electricity. It is of little value for powering transportation or direct heating. Been there done that.
Perhaps we could create a “coal crisis” to raise prices, and see how the rest of the world likes that.[swg]
The US is not going to suffer from insufficient supplies of energy anytime in the next couple hundred years. It’s “simply” a matter of price. Coal liquification or gasification technology is out there, and when the prices reach that point – which isn’t too far off – North American coal and oil shale reserves will provide abundant supplies far beyond our abilty to forecast…
There will be a point in time when the United States and Canada will probably control a larger share of the actualized petroleum producing capacity of the world than OPEC.
Best regards, Michael Sol
From a legal perspective, all streams that flow year round are considered by the Corps of Engineers to be navigable rivers. But you are correct from a practical standpoint. The nearest commercially viable waterway to the PRB is probably Sioux City IA.
It’s called intermodalism, using all available modes of transport in concert to optimize the haul. Yes, railroads do tend to want to keep stuff on the home rails as long as possible (even if it means a more circuituous routing), but there is also the consideration of freeing up rail capacity for other business, and if a railroad can dump off a low value load at the nearest barge port to free up capacity for higher value loads on down the line then it makes business sense to do so.
If labor is fully utilized anyway, then nothing is lost in labor costs by transloading between modes. If the commodity in question is of an aggregate nature, then physical transload costs can be low. There is also the potential of the LASH concept or other ocean going barge concepts, wherein the LASH system combined with often lower labor costs at inland ports compared to ocean ports can have significant price savings for the shipper in some trade lanes.
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I don’t see much of a market for rail cars on barges, either. Again additional crews and labor wont’ justify the fuel savings. Just how big a network can barges have in the U.S.?
Michael,
I don’t suppose you have access to the data that can dissemintate the relative energy use per ton/mile of electric operations in a way that can shed light on the barge vs rail fuel efficiency question? I would assume the relative efficiency of electric operation would be such that even the most “efficient” barge operations couldn’t touch it.
Here’s a different twist.
Coal comes out of the mine and is put in a train and the train runs alongside the river for about a hundred miles. Coal is unloaded, mixed with other coal and put in barges to the final destination.
Happens regularly here.
I think the key to that transportation decision is in the final destination. If there is convenient water access, then by all means, use barges.
Here along the upper Mississippi, barge access is only seasonal. In the metro area we have 4 coal fired power plants that are right on the banks of 3 perfectly good rivers (Mississippi, Minnesota, and St Croix) all of which get all their coal by rail. The utility has invested in the fleet of hoppers to bring in western coal, so there is little point in not using them year round. There is also the investment in unloading facilities for rail cars. It is safe to say that they are committed to rail.
This is really about geography and the easiest way to get between points A and B, rail being the clear choice of the land locked.[;)]
Actually in the case I cite, it is which coal company gets the contract and the mixing of the coal for environmental issues. The sulfur content of the final mix has to be at a certain level so the power plant can use same.
On the contract side, we have loaded coal trucks passing each other in opposite directions on the roadways because of contracts with different mines and users.
A fact of life but sure seems silly to have coal hauled in opposite directions on the same roads.
Hi Dave, the cost of electric power is signficantly more variable than the cost of diesel fuel. At the Washington State typical industrial power rate, the cost of electric power equivalent per gallon of diesel fuel (taking into account engine conversion efficiency) would be about 43 cents. More typically in the East, industrial power rates would be about 72 cents per equivalent amount of power compared to that actually obtained from a gallon of diesel fuel. That’s quite a range.
So, a railroad electrically powered would have, at the rate of $1.20 per gallon railroad diesel fuel, something on the order of 1.7 (at 72 cents) to 2.8 times (at 43 cents) the economic operating efficiency of a diesel-powered railroad from a cost of fuel/power standpoint.
Naturally, this changes all over the place with changing costs of diesel fuel, whereas the electric power costs have historically been far more stable and predictable.
Best regards, Michael Sol
Clear as mud.
Electric power costs are variable across geographical regions, but relatively stable (typically declining) with the passage of time within those regions. Diesel fuel costs are relatively the same across broad geographical regions, but variable, and typically increasing, with the passage of time.
Best regards, Michael Sol
There was an article in the newspaper the other day about the revitalization of the American Coal industry. One of the reasons given was China starting to import more coal.
Jeff