"On a typical day in North Dakota prairie towns like Williston, Dickinson and Beulah, trains with 100 tank cars line up to be loaded with oil destined for markets to the east, west, and south."
"In total, about 675,000 barrels of crude leave daily on as many as 10 trains from North Dakota, now the second largest oil-producing state after Texas. That’s due to the drilling process known as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, that has rendered accessible petroleum once too costly to procure.
Production in the state is rising so fast -- from about 150,000 barrels a day in 2008 to more than 790,000 today -- that pipeline construction can’t keep up. Railroads move 75 percent of its oil, including the load of more than 70 tanker cars that derailed and exploded July 6 in a small Canadian town, killing at least 15 and leaving dozens missing."
Jim Snyder and Jim Efstathiou Jr. report for Bloomberg July 10, 2013.
SEE ALSO:
"Canadian Oil Train Tragedy Draws Attention To Rising Oil Train Traffic In Pacific Northwest" (Northwest Public Radio)
"Oil Train Tragedy in Canada Spotlights Rising Crude Transport by Rail" (National Geographic)
"DOT-111 Oil Tank Cars, Like Those In Lac-Megantic, Quebec Disaster, Long Seen As Flawed" (Reuters)
"Pipeline Or Rail: Canada's Oil Shipments Will Double" (Toronto Star)
"Criminal Probe Opened in Quebec Oil Train Inferno" (USA TODAY)
"Death Toll Rises To 15 in Canadian Derailment; Investigators Say No Evidence of Sabotage" (NBC News)
"Criminal Probe in Quebec Oil Train Derailment, Death Toll Rises To 15" (ABC News)
"Irving Refinery Increasingly Using Rail To Transport Crude" (Toronto Globe and Mail)
"Quebec Oil-Train Tragedy Triggered Oil Spill That Threatens Water Supplies" (Grist)
