Groups petition to ban older tank cars for oil

SEATTLE – Two environmental groups are asking the U.S. Department of Transportation to immediately ban shipments of volatile crude oil in older railroad tank cars, citing recent explosive oil train wrecks and the department’s own findings that those accidents pose an “imminent hazard.”

The petition filed Tuesday by the Sierra Club and ForestEthics seeks an emergency order within 30 days to prohibit crude from the Northern Plains’ Bakken region and elsewhere from being carried in the older tank cars, known as DOT-111s.

Accident investigators have reported the cars rupture or puncture even in wrecks at slow speeds.

The Obama administration has said it will propose a new rule this month governing tank cars, which could include retrofits of older-model cars and tougher standards for new ones.

But that “will take too long to address the imminent hazard posed by use of dangerous DOT-111 tank cars to ship crude oil,” according to the petition, which the law firm Earthjustice filed on behalf of the two groups.

It could take a year before a rule is finalized. In the meantime, the shipments are putting small towns and major cities along the rail lines at risk, the petition said.

Transportation Department spokesman Ryan Daniels said the agency cannot comment on whether an outright ban is under consideration, because a formal rule-making process for the older tank cars already is underway.

Since 2008, derailments of oil trains in the U.S. and Canada have seen the 70,000-gallon tank cars break open and ignite on multiple occasions, resulting in huge fireballs. A train carrying North Dakota crude in DOT-111s crashed into a Quebec town last summer, killing 47 people.