Days Before Casselton Oil Train Explosion
by Steve Horn / January 7th, 2014
On December 20, both chambers of the U.S. Congress
passed a little-noticed bill to expedite permitting for
hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) on public lands in the
Bakken Shale basin, located predominantly in North Dakota. And on December 26, President Obama
signed the bill into law.
Days later, on December 30, a
Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNSF) freight train owned by
Warren Buffett carrying Bakken fracked oil
exploded in Casselton, North Dakota. Locals breathed a
smoky sigh of relief that the disaster happened outside the town center. In July 2013, a “
bomb train” carrying Bakken oil
exploded in Lac-Mégantic, Quebec, killing 47 people.
Dubbed the “
Bureau of Land Management (BLM) Streamlining Act,” the bill
passed unanimously in the Senate as
S.244 and
415-1 in the House as
H.R. 767,
with Rep. Justin Amash (R-MI) serving as the sole “nay” vote and 16
representatives abstaining. Among the abstentions were representatives
Keith Defazio (D-OR), Henry Waxman (D-CA) and John Campbell (R-CA).]
H.R. 767′s sponsor is North Dakota Republican Rep. Kevin Cramer, who received
$213,150 from the oil and gas industry prior to the 2012 election, and an additional
$29,000 for the forthcoming 2014 elections.
Co-sponsors include Wyoming Republican Rep. Cynthia Lummis (
$109,050 from the oil and gas industry pre-2012 election,
$28,500) in the 2014 election cycle, South Dakota Republican Rep. Kristi Noem (
$95,501 from the industry pre-2012 election,
$20,400 pre-2014) and Montana Republican Rep. Steve Daines (
$124,620 pre-2012 election and
$87,412) pre-2014.
S.244 is sponsored by Sen. John Hoeven (R-ND), who has taken
$291,237 from the oil and gas industry since his 2010 election to Congress. Cosponsor Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND) received
$111,050 from the oil and gas industry since her 2012 electoral victory.
Sen. Hoeven
visited
BNSF’s Fort Worth, Texas, corporate headquarters on January 3 to meet
with the company’s CEO, Matt Rose, “to get an update on the Casselton
derailment and measures that can be taken to enhance railroad safety.”
“While it’s a blessing that no one was hurt in this accident, we must
now work with the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), industry
and leaders on all levels to get to the root cause of this week’s
derailment,” Hoeven
said in a press statement not mentioning the bill he sponsored will create additional oil-by-rail markets.
“We also need to rigorously review ways that shipping petroleum products by rail can be improved for safety.”
Energy Policy Act of 2005 Amendment
The BLM Streamlining Act passed into law by the Obama administration
is actually an amendment to Section 365 of the Bush-era 2005 Energy
Policy Act. It
creates offices in North Dakota and Montana to rubber stamp fracking permits on public lands in those states.
Section 365 created a “
Pilot Project to Improve Federal Permit Coordination”
on public lands “to improve coordination of oil and gas permitting…as a
means of meeting the Nation’s need for dependable, affordable,
environmentally responsible energy,”
explains the BLM website.
This
compelled
BLM to set up field offices to more efficiently fast track oil and gas
drilling permits in Rawlins and Buffalo, Wyoming; Miles City, Montana;
Farmington and Carlsbad, New Mexico; Grand Junction/Glenwood Springs,
Colorado; and Vernal, Utah.
Left out of the original Section 365: North Dakota, the new darling of the U.S. domestic oil fracking scene.
The BLM Streamlining Act
“[r]eplaces the Miles City, Montana field office with the
Montana/Dakotas State Office,” creating an open season for fracking
North Dakota’s public lands.
The Energy Policy Act of 2005 is perhaps most famous for the “
Halliburton Loophole,”
which exempted the fracking industry from the legal dictates of the
Safe Drinking Water Act and other laws. The loophole also made the
chemicals contained in “fracking fluid” a trade secret, meaning the
industry doesn’t have to disclose the recipe of chemicals injected into
the ground in fracking operations.
Obama Executive Order: Fast-Track Bakken Permits
In March 2012, President Obama
issued Executive Order 13604, lending an explanation to his signing off on the BLM Streamlining Act.
Obama
announced the Order while standing in front of the sections of pipe that would soon become the southern half of TransCanada’s
Keystone XL pipeline (now rebranded the “
Gulf Coast Pipeline“) in Cushing, Oklahoma (the “
pipeline crossroads of the world“) — a pipeline that will be fast-tracked by the Order.
But it did much more than that,
calling
on the federal government to “significantly reduce the aggregate time
required to make decisions in the permitting and review of
infrastructure projects.”
“The quality of our Nation’s infrastructure depends…on Federal
permitting and review processes, including planning, approval and
consultation processes,”
explains
the Obama Order. “[I]t is critical that executive departments and
agencies take all steps within their authority…to execute Federal
permitting and review processes with maximum efficiency and
effectiveness.”
Another key piece of that Order: creation of the
Bakken Federal Executive Group.
The Group was created to find “ways to facilitate the development of oil and gas resources in the booming Bakken Formation,”
according to
Petroleum News Bakken.
“Interior continues to be a leader in implementing President Obama’s
vision for a federal permitting process that is smarter [and] more
efficient,”
David Hayes, Department of Interior Deputy Secretary
said
in a June press release on the Bakken Federal Executive Group. “By
coordinating across the many federal agencies involved in the Bakken
region…we are able to offer a better process for industry.”
Just over a year later in May 2013, Obama
issued a related follow-up memorandum to the Executive Order,
calling for permitting time of major infrastructure projects to be cut in half.
“Rather Benign Bill…Rather Major Ramifications”
Speaking on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives in May 2013, Cramer — sponsor of the House version of the bill —
referred to the BLM Streamlining Act as “a rather benign bill with rather major ramifications.”
Cramer also referred to North Dakota as the “perfect laboratory” for
streamlining of permits on public lands, saying “the North Dakota
experiment will be one people look back on and say ‘That’s the way to do
it, that’s the right way to do it.’”
Investor Press: “ND’s Oil Future Just Got Brighter”
Remarking on the bill’s passage, investor press outlet
Motley Fool boasted “North Dakota’s oil future just got brighter.”
Yet, not everyone’s happy about the bill. In an interview with
DeSmogBlog, actor
Mark Ruffalo — founder of the activist group
Water Defense — asked the rhetorical question, “Who are these representatives working for?”
“What is clear is that in nearly every transaction Congress and this
president does with the fossil fuel industry, the American people and
the commons of public property, our public air and public water are up
for sale for real cheap,” Ruffalo remarked.
“Not only are these transactions cheap but in the end we foot the
bill of the costs of exploding trains and bursting pipelines carrying
highly volatile explosive substances that no train nor pipeline is meant
to carry in the form of Bakken crude oil.”
“North Dakota will be a case study of a land that was squeezed dry of
every precious thing that beautiful state has been blessed with: its
majestic beauty, clean air and water.”
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