(July 7, 2014 – WSJ) North Dakota Fracking: Behind the Oil-Train Explosions (By Russell Gold and Chester Dawson)
Volatile Gases Aren't Removed From Bakken Shale Crude; 'The Regulations Are Silent'
When energy companies started extracting oil from shale formations in South Texas a few years ago, they invested hundreds of millions of dollars to make the volatile crude safer to handle.
In North Dakota's Bakken Shale oil field, nobody installed the necessary equipment. The result is that the second-fastest growing source of crude in the U.S. is producing oil that pipelines often would reject as too dangerous to transport.
Now the decision not to build the equipment is coming back to haunt the oil industry as the federal government seeks to prevent fiery accidents of trains laden with North Dakota oil. Investigators probing crude-by-rail accidents, including one a year ago that killed 47 people in Quebec, are trying to determine why shale oil has proved so combustible—a question that has taken on growing urgency as rail shipments rise.
Only one stabilizer, which can remove the most volatile gases before transport, has been built in North Dakota and it hasn't begun operation, according to a review by The Wall Street Journal.
Stabilizers use heat and pressure to force light hydrocarbon molecules—including ethane, butane and propane—to form into vapor and boil out of the liquid crude. The operation can lower the vapor pressure of crude oil, making it less volatile and therefore safer to transport by pipeline or rail tank car…
Read the full story here: http://online.wsj.com/articles/north-dakota-fracking-behind-the-oil-trai...
…The situation in the Bakken contrasts with the Eagle Ford Shale in South Texas. In 2012, there was basically no equipment to stabilize the crude. But companies have spent hundreds of millions of dollars to build centralized facilities and pipelines to move the resulting propane and butane to a Gulf Coast petrochemical complex.
The crude was stabilized enough to be shipped without incident through pipelines, trucks and rail tank cars, says Rusty Braziel, an industry consultant. "Over a two-year period of time, the vast majority of the problem went away."
