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ND: Train collision sets oil cars ablaze
(Chicago Tribune) “A BNSF train carrying crude oil in North Dakota collided with another train on Monday, setting off a series of explosions that left at least 10 cars ablaze, the latest in a string of incidents that have raised alarms over growing oil-by-rail traffic. Local residents heard five powerful explosions just a mile outside of the small town of Casselton after a westbound train carrying soybeans derailed, and an eastbound 104-car train hauling crude oil ran into it just after 2 p.m. CST, local officials said. There were no reports of any injuries.” (12/30/13)

Nathan: This is the third “significant incident” within a short while.  I figure that it will trigger still more and more panic – because that is what the mainstream media love to do.  A friend (Tim) sent me the following editorial earlier this week, discussing the issue.

Tribune editorial: Transporting Bakken crude needs review
(Bismarck Tribune) Is Bakken sweet crude more volatile than typical crude oil? If so, do additional precautions need to be taken in transporting Bakken crude from well head to refinery?  The questions need answering.  Certainly, no one wants to be responsible for a derailment, explosion and fireball like the one in July in Lac Megantic, Quebec, in which 42 people were killed. Apparently, the tanker cars in the train were carrying mislabeled Bakken crude. Another oil train derailment in Alabama in November also resulted in a powerful explosion, again the cargo was Bakken crude. Fortunately, no one was killed in the Alabama incident.  The investigator for the Transportation Safety Board of Canada working on the Lac Megantic explosion describes the Bakken crude tested from the tankers there to be closer to gasoline than typical crude. It’s a finding that Beach Fire Chief Dan Buchholz agrees with in general.

Nathan: To me, this seems like nothing but yet another attempt to provide excuses for not developing the Bakken play, and extract the trillions of barrels of oil and gas which seem to be located there in North and South Dakota, Montana, and up into Saskatchewan and Manitoba.  As I pointed out previously, this “difference” is NOT something new.

Apparently, the people who are dealing with this issue are not familiar with the history of oil production in the United States, based on their “surprise” about Bakken sweet.  For decades, crude oil produced in the Permian Basin – the famous “West Texas Intermediate” was a very light, sweet oil which COULD be burned in the gasoline-powered engines of the 1930s – 1960s, with the possible need to add lead the the “white gasoline” which came directly from the well-head with a very simple filter.  It was “highly volatile” and additional precautions had to be taken with the handling and transport – techniques which apparently have been lost in the last two generations.

Labeling is always a problem, but it is impossible to come up with fifty different labels for fifty different types of crude oil.  Oil flowing from wells in the Permian Basin (West Texas) is DIFFERENT than oil flowing from fields in central Kansas, or Pennsylvania, or the Powder River Basin in Wyoming or the Overthrust Belt in Utah.  You cannot provide sufficient information to tell firefighters and first responders ALL the information some board or commission or armchair expert in DC or Ottawa thinks that they need, or even what the firefighters themselves might want to have.  It is no different than dealing with the various concentrations of another common chemical, like hydrochloric or nitric acid, or for that matter, the difference in various “grades” or blends of wheat flour!  But when you want an excuse to get more power, or to increase fees, or to prevent something from being done, this is perfect.  It is, indeed, the same tactic that got the Keystone XL Pipeline put on hold, because they could come up with some small differences, invent or lie about things (like the temperature to which certain types of crude oil must be heated to be pumped in pipelines) and then went hogwild.  We’ve seen it happen with manmade global warming, we’ve seen it happen with asbestos and lead paint and gun control.  And it will keep happening until people demand that it stop and take action to deny power to the idiots who do these kinds of things.

It is interesting, and perhaps important to point out that this sort of nonsense, this “Chicken Little” or “Cry Wolf” sort of behavior has been going on a VERY long time (I think that the “Boy Who Cried Wolf” was originally a fable from about the time of Plato.) and so we will always have it with us.  It existed when people invented the railroad, nearly 200 years ago (Oh, people will die if they travel that fast; the noisy contraptions will make all the farm animals die or spoil their milk or become maddened; the train will set the forests on fire!).  It happened 130 or so years ago, when the automobile was being developed and deployed (Oh, people will die if they travel that fast, the noisy contraptions will destroy city life and kill crops, people can’t control them well enough, they are unsafe).  And SOME of these claims were true, but people – voluntarily, privately (for the most part), and intelligently worked around or solved the problems.

It is easier today than ever before in history to check out the facts as claimed by the hysterical news media and spouted by the people who want nothing to change and fear change.  Sadly, it seems that it is very difficult to get most people to look things up on-line or in the library or by talking to people who really ARE expert because they work with and solve problems in that field every day.  Yes, there is a lot out on the Worldwide Web that is bogus – especially found on the websites of the mainstream media, special-interest groups, and government.  But the truth is also available, and cross-checks much better than the lies, exaggerations, and distortions.

But knowing it is NOT the real problem.  The real problem is that we have surrendered so much of our lives and society and economy to the “elites” whether it is the celebrities (particularly those in the media and other entertainment industries) or to the fanatics (whether sports or religious or social or environist or peace or war), or to the governments. The only way that common sense can again be followed in these United States, and the world, is when we take away the power we have so foolishly given to every institution from a Home Owners Association and a Township Board clean to Congress, the White House, the Supreme Court, and the UN General Assembly, and everything in between.  When we stop living our lives for and at the whim of other humans.

Enough is enough.

Mama’s Note: Amen!