$fracked oil train car$

$fracked oil train car$

FRACKED OIL TRAIN CAR FULL

They had all the oil production of Texas - not quite as much, but they're now number two to Texas - but they didn't have any of the infrastructure in place. The problem is that, you know, while they suddenly became - you know, had this huge resource, and they now were Texas. They were pulling out hundreds of thousands of gallons of barrels a day. STERN: What happened is in 2005, roughly, there were advance - new developments in fracking technology that allowed the producers to pull light crude oil from about two miles beneath the ground in North Dakota. Why are we seeing so much more tanker traffic and crude oil being carried on railroads?

$fracked oil train car$

And I guess this oil actually had come from the United States. But we're seeing a lot more rail traffic of tanker cars in the United States. STERN: Yes, it just vaporized these people.ĭAVIES: Now, this accident was in Canada. The remains of five people - no remains were found of five of the people. And it immediately engulfed the bar/restaurant in flames. It was one o'clock in the morning on a Saturday night - a beautiful July night.

FRACKED OIL TRAIN CAR FULL

And a tide of flaming oil flowed in every direction, including the direction of a nearby bar/restaurant that was full of patrons. Fireballs went shooting several-hundred feet into the air.

$fracked oil train car$

It derailed and several of the railcars exploded. And by the time it reached Lac-Megantic, seven miles down the hill, it was doing 60 miles an hour. And in the middle of the night, the brakes failed on the locomotives. And he called a cab and went into town, into Lac-Megantic, to get sleep and spend the night at a hotel. And so the railroad instructed the lone conductor - the lone crewmember -to leave it overnight with the engines running unattended. MARCUS STERN: There was a train that was hauling crude oil - about 2.6 million gallons - and it had a little bit of a mechanical problem. I'm sure the French pronunciation's different. Let's begin with this horrific accident that happened in the Canadian town of Lac-Megantic - or at least that's how it's pronounced in this country. Well, Marcus Stern, welcome to FRESH AIR. His reporting on the risks of rail transportation of crude oil was a joint effort of the environmental website InsideClimate News and The Weather Channel. Marcus Stern won the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting for his investigation of San Diego Congressman Randy 'Duke' Cunningham. His stories focus in particular on how regulators have responded, or failed to, following the tragedy in Canada. Our guest, investigative reporter Marcus Stern, has spent the past year looking into the risks of transporting oil on rail tanker cars, a practice which has expanded dramatically in the past eight years. Five months before that, a tank car derailment in Canada sparked fires that killed 47 people. You need fire and ambulance - everything - right away.ĭAVIES: That's a 911 call from a derailment and explosion near Casselton, N.D., in December of 2013. UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #1: Oh, it just blew up. UNIDENTIFIED OPERATOR: Nine-one-one, what's your emergency? And it isn't the only such accident in recent years. Earlier this month, a train carrying crude oil derailed in West Virginia, sending 27 cars off the track, spilling oil across the landscape and into a nearby creek, and causing explosions and fires that burned for days. I'm Dave Davies in for Terry Gross, who's off this week.

$fracked oil train car$

Fracked oil train car