Refinery switching to newer rail cars for crude oil
BELLINGHAM — The BP Cherry Point refinery in northwest Washington state says it will no longer accept any volatile North Dakota crude oil unless it arrives on newer-model tank cars.The Bellingham Herald reported that by the first week of October the facility had stopped using pre-2011 standard tank cars for the shipments.The change comes amid public concern about the safety of shipping crude by train. Since 2008, derailments of oil trains in the U.S. and Canada have seen the older 70,000-gallon tank cars break open and ignite on multiple occasions, resulting in huge fireballs. A train carrying Bakken-formation crude from North Dakota in the older tanks crashed in a Quebec town last year, killing 47 people.BP spokesman Bill Kidd said Cherry Point was already using newer tank cars to receive about 60 percent of its crude oil, but expedited the switch to the newer cars in response to community concerns.
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