GREAT JOB, ENVIRO-KOOKS: Derailment of Oil-Laden Train Confirms Need for Keystone Pipeline

Guest post by Investor's Business Daily

Energy Policy: An oil-laden train collides with another and bursts into flames in a small American town, proving why pipelines are safer and why environmentalist opposition to a pipeline from Canada is misguided.

Casselton, N.D., had a near brush with tragedy after a train of tank cars carrying crude oil derailed, resulting in fiery explosions and a call from the town's mayor for a re-examination of how such fuel is transported across the United States.

The railroad runs right through the middle of Casselton, a town of 2,400 people about 25 miles west of Fargo, and Mayor Ed McConnell said dozens of people could have been killed had the derailments had occurred in the town, not just outside.

It's time, he said, to "have a conversation" with federal lawmakers about the dangers of transporting oil by rail.

"There have been numerous derailments in this area," he told the Associated Press. "It's almost gotten to the point that it looks like not if we're going to have an accident, it's when. We dodged a bullet by having it out of town, but this is too close for comfort."

Thanks to a boom in oil production in the Bakken shale formation that runs underneath the state, North Dakota has become the No. 2 oil-producing state in the nation. It's creating a lot of the kind of high-paying jobs that the rest of America desperately wants — and needs.

An estimated 11 to 12 crude-oil unit trains depart daily from the oil region in western North Dakota. Due to lack of pipelines, some 69% of the state's oil is currently shipped to market by rail.

The state's top oil regulator has said as much as 90% of North Dakota's oil is to be carried by train in 2014.

In July, a train loaded with North Dakota crude derailed and burned in the Quebec town of Lac-Megantic, 130 miles east of Montreal. The accident created an inferno of burning crude, killing 47 and incinerating the downtown area.

The Canadian and North Dakota oil train derailments come amid the controversy over the transport of Canadian crude through the proposed Keystone XL pipeline to Gulf Coast refineries. Keystone XL would not only transport Canadian oil from the sands of Alberta.

It would also carry oil from the Bakken in North Dakota, where jobs and the economy are booming as a result.

Many of the rail shipments from the Bakken fields are being handled by BNSF Railway Co., which has more than 1,000 miles of tracks in the region.

President Obama's favorite 1-percenter, Warren Buffett, made a good investment when he bought BNSF in 2010 for $26.5 billion.

With the explosive development of the Bakken shale formation, its oil riches are shipped south on Buffett's railroad in dangerous tank cars instead of a proposed link to the stalled Keystone XL pipeline.

Environmentalists worry about pipeline leaks, but the fact is railroads suffer spills 2.7 times more often than pipelines, according to the Association of American Railroads.

"The evidence is overwhelming that railroads are far less safe than pipelines," says Charles Ebinger, director of the Brookings Institution's energy security initiative.

Environmentalists fighting Keystone XL ignore the fact that there would be no greater danger from the pipeline than that posed by any of the more than 50,000 existing miles of safely operating pipeline already crisscrossing the U.S., including Nebraska and the Ogallala Aquifer.

Certainly pipelines do not derail and burn in or near population centers.

Speaking of Keystone XL's economic benefits in a sluggish economy, former President George W. Bush, the keynote speaker at the recent annual Developing Unconventionals, or DUG, energy conference, advised, "Build the damn thing."

Certainly the residents of Casselton, N.D., would agree.

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