Cargo Business Newswire

Monday, April 7, 2014

UN panel to investigate oil-by-rail

The United Nations said global rules for handling the kind of oil shipments involved in several recent deadly derailments might need to be revised, in a move that might worry the oil-by-rail industry.

The U.N. panel for shipping hazardous materials this week said that it accepted a request from U.S. and Canadian experts to reexamine the rules that govern shipping fuel produced in areas such as North Dakota's Bakken.

Specifically, the panel will look at whether rules for shipping crude are stringent enough to account for dangerous pressure and volatile gases of unprocessed crude.

"Unprocessed crude oil may present unique hazards based on the specific gas content, posing different hazards in transport," the U.N. panel on transporting dangerous goods said in a statement.

One of the primary incidents that prompted this reexamination of the rules was a case involving a 74-car runaway train carrying Bakken crude that exploded in Lac-Megantic, Quebec, last July, killing 47 people.

For more of the Reuters story: www.reuters.com