Canada needs stronger tank cars for oil, safety board chair says

MONTREAL •Canadaought to require stronger tank cars for transporting flammable liquids sooner than the current deadline in 2025, Transportation Safety Board Chair Kathy Fox said on Thursday, noting that crude-by-rail shipments are expected to rise in the country.

“We understand that it can’t happen all at once. But we’d like to see it sooner,” Fox said in an interview, without giving a specific alternative date. “We do have an ongoing concern that flammable liquids be transported in the most robust tank cars.”

Canada and the United States have introduced new requirements to more safely transport flammable liquids, after a 2013 runaway train ex- plosion carrying crude killed 47 in Quebec.

Older DOT-111 cars, used during the tragedy in Lacmégantic, have already been replaced in Canada by CPC1232 cars for moving crude oil, but even these must be completely phased out by May 1, 2025 for the transport of flammable liquids, according to the TSB.

They will need to be replaced by TC-117 cars, or retrofits that meet the same standard, which has thicker steel.

The U.S. Department of Transportation expects flammable liquids to be carried in comparable DOT-117 rail tank cars, or retrofits, by May 1, 2029.

Canada has not experienced a major derailment of a crude train since 2015, Fox said. But in the United States, a BNSF Railway Co freight train carrying crude oil derailed in northwest Iowa in June, sending some 230,000 gallons of oil into a state waterway.

Crude-by-rail transports are showing signs of a resurgence. Canada exported a record 204,558 barrels per day of crude by rail in June, the National Energy Board said on Wednesday, as oil shippers coped with congested pipelines.

Recommendations following Lac-mégantic have led to improved oversight and standards for tank cars, Fox said. But she remains concerned over a recent rise in uncontrolled train movements that could be prevented with better training, less reliance on air or hand brakes and improved physical defences.