Oil by Pipeline or by Rail?

Unless you are ready to give up driving, you should probably be thinking of how oil can best be transported across the country so that it can be converted into gasoline and ultimately fuel your car. (These days, you might be able to shift your choice of automobile fuel to electricity, but that doesn’t change the issue much since oil and other fossil fuels are also the major source of making electricity in the United States.)

The Congressional Research Office recently published a very informative research paper on the matter and, as with most issues, there are “pros and cons.” What was clear though is that transportation of oil and oil products by truck is the riskiest way to move it. There are more chances for spills and the track record for trucks isn’t nearly as safe as for pipelines or railroads. That interested me because here, at the local level, all of our gasoline and oil products are transported to the customer by truck.

Though we hear a lot of noise about shutting down pipelines and oil tanker railcars, no interest group or elected official has, to my knowledge, advocated shutting down gasoline stations where tanker trucks regularly pull in to deliver needed fuel for our automobiles. I expect that polls have shown that voters, no matter what their political persuasion, would not react kindly to empty gas tanks with no fuel to operate their cars. So we are stuck with truck transportation of petroleum products at the retail/local level.

But, what about the transportation of oil and oil products across the country, let’s say from North Dakota to New York, or Texas to New Jersey? If we did it by truck, we would have to put a million more trucks on the road. Nobody is for that and it would be outrageously expensive. Thus, the choice comes down to pipelines or rail.

In terms of the amount of oil spilled, since most oil has (until recently) been transported by pipeline, most spills were related to pipeline failures. However, things are rapidly changing. Because of the growth in domestic production and since it has become difficult to receive government approval for pipelines, more oil is now moving by rail. In 2013, there was more oil spilled from railcars than during the previous 37 years. Why? Because much more of it is now moving to market by rail.

If you measure safety by human tragedy, there has been no recent history as tragic as the oil train derailment in Quebec two years ago where 47 people died. Though without the comparison in loss of life, we were reminded again recently of the risks of using rail when 26 oil tank cars derailed and caught fire in West Virginia.

So that brings us back again to pipelines. Pipelines have historically moved about 99.99% of the oil they ship to market without major incident. Their construction and safety standards are heavily regulated (as they should be) by the federal government. Those who want to live in a completely risk-free universe will probably continue to oppose them. But, for most of us, who want gasoline in our tanks, pipelines would seem to be the logical and preferred way to move oil and petroleum products across the country.

We live in a great country and are fortunate that, in recent years, we have become less dependent on Mideast oil. Now, we just have to figure out how best to move our domestic oil production to market.

Rolland Kidder
Ashville, NY

Mr. Kidder was a Democratic member of the New York State Assembly from 1975-1982 and a member of its Environmental Conservation Committee. He is former owner and founder of a Western New York natural gas exploration company.

Contact Info:
716-789-4620
rolland.kidder@gmail.com