Is there a significant amount of soda ash (or Trona) shipped by rail today?
Is it an important business for railroads?
Is the Mojave Desert still a large producer of Trona?
Thank you.
There are at least four suppliers of soda ash in southern Wyoming that ship a lot of the stuff via the UP. OCI, FMC, General Chemical, and Solvay Minerals are, I believe, the companies left. I wouldn’t be surprised if trainloads of the stuff still came out of Green River.
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
In modest detail:
- Trona is the common ore of soda ash, Na2-CO3. After washing, cleaning, and purification, one ton of trona becomes 1300 llbs. of soda ash.
- The U.S. produced 11 million tons of soda ash in 2005, virtually all of which was shipped by rail due to the great distance between the sources and the consumption points or ports. UP is the dominant hauler, by far.
- While individual plant production is proprietary, the sole significant California producer of soda ash, Searles Valley Minerals, Inc., at Trona, Calif., produced about 1.4 million tons. The remainder of U.S. production, 9.6 million tons, came from five mines in the Green River Basin west of Green River, Wyo. The sole Colorado producer, Solvay Chemicals, Inc., Parachute plant, is shut down for soda ash production and only produces sodium bicarbonate. The Wyoming mines extract trona ore (solid), whereas the California operation extracts brines.
- Price FOB mine for Wyoming soda ash at year’s end 2005 was $155/ton; the price FOB Trona, Calif., was $180/ton, the difference reflecting the cost of rail transportation to West Coast ports. This is better than double the price at the beginning of the year, reflecting a strengthening export market.
- The U.S. exported 4.68 million tons of soda ash in 2005.
- China is now the leading producer of soda ash, virtually all of it synthetic. The U.S. is the only major producer in the world of natural soda ash. U.S. soda ash is highly competitive in export markets because synthetic soda ash is energy-intensive, thus very expensive these days.
- Primary U.S. uses of soda ash is glass (3.05 million tons), chemical manufacturing (1.68 million tons), and soaps and detergents (.624 million tons). Most of what you think is “soap” in your dry laundry detergent is actually soda ash which is there as water-conditioning agent.
- Soda ash is a mature indus
About three trains a day worth – two east for domestic consumption, one west to Portland for export, on average.
Current Wyoming producers and nameplate capacity are:
FMC Wyoming Corp., Granger plant (former TG Soda Ash, Inc.), 1.3 million tons
FMC Wyoming Corp., Green River plant (j.v. with Sumitomo Corp. and Nippon Sheet Glass Co. Ltd…), 3.55 million tons
General Chemical (Soda Ash) Partners (j.v. with Owens-Illinois, Inc.), 2.80 million tons
OCI Chemical Corp. (Oriental Chemical Industries Corp., Republic of Korea) j.v. with Anadarko Petroleum Corp. (49% share formerly owned by Union Pacific Resources), 3.10 million tons
Solvay Chemicals Inc. (80% Solvay S.A. of Belgium, 20% Asahi Glass Co. of Japan), Green River plant, 2.80 million tons
S. Hadid
WOW! You really beat me to this one! But the Local guy has one that you forgot… Church and Dwight is out there too. They are the producers of Arm and Hammer Products.
Solvay had a collapse about 11 years ago and it actually registered as a 5.29 on the richter scale. 2 guys were trapped inside, one of which ended up dying, the other, got out alive, and still works there, but he never really says anything about the ordeal.
I did not know that Anadarko produced trona/soda ash with OCI. Learn something new every day…
OCI used to be owned by Rhone Polonc, but was sold a few years back, not sure how many though.
The 2 east trains are long buggers too… they stretch completely through town, and they usually have 6 locomotives on the front end, and every now and then another on the rear. But they have been know to sit in Rock Springs for days on end.
Ah yes. The Wyoming soda ash. I remember it well. The ICG actually had covered hoppers assinged to the Wyoming shippers.
This was in the days before the UP went east of Council Bluffs. So there was a fight over who bridged this lucrative business between the UP and Conrail. If a railroad supplied equipment for loading it got a cut of the business. There was some kind of leverage. UP also supplied equipment. IRRC it was 3:1. If we put 50 CH in the pool, we got 150 loads per month routed UP-Council Bluffs-ICG-Chicago-Conrail…
Because of Federal Economic Regulation, we couldn’t compete on price. It was a through rate and we could only join the through rate, we couldn’t change it. But then deregulation happened.
And now we could give FMC a rebate. And we did. With nothing to loose on our dried up Iowa line we tried to buy the soda ash business. For every load routed UP-ICG-CR FMC got a check for I don’t remember how much. We were going under in Iowa and we were going to take the C&NW with us. This would have played Hell with the soda ash movement.
And this is why railroad consolidation is “Good” and open access is “Bad”.
Good point. Yes, Church & Dwight’s plant is in the same vicinity as the five soda ash producers, but no, Church & Dwight does not produce soda ash for market. It does produce soda ash as an intermediate step toward making sodium bicarbonate (which it then ships by rail). Since the question referred to soda ash by rail I ignored commodities made from soda ash (also I ignored because there’s a whole lot of companies that take soda ash and make it into something else, then ship it by rail).
Ten years ago – Rhone-Poulenc Basic Chemicals sold its share to OCI in 1996.
S. Hadid
Ok, I gotta know… How do you know all that? [:P]
I may be mistaken but Church and Dwight here in Wyoming makes A good chunk of all the Arm and Hammer Products sold.
It also helped to have the soda ash connect with the Salinas perishable train at North Platte for an 18 hour run from the UP at Fremont to CR at Proviso.
From the above, it would appear that Union Pacific is the sole originator of soda ash in the US. I know the site in the Mojave Desert (Trona, CA) was formerly Southern Pacific territory (the “jawbone line”), but that has to be UP territory now.
Greyhounds’ interesting post tells me soda ash was big business for the midwestern railroads serving Omaha. It certainly would be interesting to learn more about how the lines into Omaha competed for that soda ash traffic, particularly after de-regulation. I imagine rates fell dramatically. Does Iowa Interstate handle any soda ash traffic, I wonder?
Thanks.
Because it’s my job to know?
Church & Dwight’s Green River plant accounts for about 30% of U.S. sodium bicarbonate producation, ~ 240,000 tons/year
S. Hadid
Yes, the former SP Searles Branch is part of the UP system now.
UP is not the sole originator of soda ash, however. A significant quantity of soda ash is trucked to Bonneville, Wyoming, approximately 175 miles, and to Ogden, Utah, approximately 160 miles, and transloaded to BNSF. This is primarily soda ash that will go to a BNSF-switched destination, and it’s also to serve as a lid on UP transportation charges. Soda ash is also trucked from Trona to Southern California consumers.
Iowa Interstate hauls only soda ash destined for Iowa Interstate-served consumers, which is very little. No railroad willingly short-hauls itself. I’ve never seen any soda ash interchanged to CN-IN in Council Bluffs.
S. Hadid
In the past BNSF moved significant amounts of soda ash via a transload at Bonneville, WY. Once Staggers was passed the Omaha lines got in a price war and drove their profitablity to zero. At that point the CNW turned their pricing over to the UP and everything into the Northeast moved UP-Fremont-CNW-Chgo-Connections. Since 1995 all soda ash orginated by the UP for eastern receivers has moved UP-Chgo/ESTL-Connections.
Ok, so if there is a $30/ton differential between Ca and Wy prices due to transportation, then does that mean that UP is getting $3000 per railcar to Portland?
100 ton capacity x $30/ton differential = $3000 per carload.
A 100 car train would yield $considerable $coin…$300,000.
Am I missing something here Mr. Hadid?
ed
No, I don’t think you’re missing anything. But the price difference is $25/ton, not $30, so if all of that is related to transportation charges, there’s a transportation charge difference of $2500 per 100-ton car, one haul of about 200 miles and the other of about 900 miles, for a cost of about 3.5 cents per ton-mile.
You are correct…$25 per ton. Still a considerable amount of money per train.
ed
Does the producer at Trona still belong to ANSAC? If so the spreads don’t make much difference in the export market. The LA Basin market is another matter with most of the Trona production going by truck to customers in CA.
No, Trona does not belong to ANSAC. It’s off-conference. I didn’t know it ever did belong to ANSAC.
(For those of you baffled, ANSAC is the export association of and owned by the Wyoming soda ash producers.)
S. Hadid
Would the FMC and General Chemicals PS 4750 Cu. Ft. Covered Hoppers on the CN-GTW be most likely used to transport soda ash?
Andrew
It seems like around 1993, there were rumors that Trona Railway wanted to buy the Lone Pine Branch, or SP wanted to sell. I am thinking it was the former. If so, I would if TRC would have been able to build a connection with ATSF.