NPR "All Things Considered," 3/4:
West Virginia Derailment Raises Concerns About Volatility Of Bakken Oil
NPR's Melissa Block speaks with Wall Street Journal reporter Russell Gold about the volatility of crude oil from the Bakken shale formation in North Dakota. That's the same oil that exploded when a train derailed in West Virginia two weeks ago.
MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
Dangerously high levels of combustible gas - that's what tests show about the crude oil in the freight train that derailed in West Virginia late last month. Dozens of train cars burst into flame and exploded into huge fireballs. No one was killed, but 200 people from nearby towns were forced to flee their homes. The fire burned for more than three days. The train was carrying crude from North Dakota's Bakken oil fields and Russell Gold, who covers energy for The Wall Street Journal, has seen a lab report analyzing that oil. He joins me now - welcome to the program.
RUSSELL GOLD: Thanks for having me.
BLOCK: And Russell, what does that lab report show?
GOLD: Well, the lab report, which was a test of the crude oil in North Dakota, showed that it had a vapor pressure of about 13.9 pounds per square inch, which is very, very high for oil. Most oils or average oil might be somewhere around six pounds per square inch. That's actually above - a new state rule says you can't ship oil if it's above 13.7.
So when North Dakota adopted this rule right at the end of last year, there were a lot of people that said we're glad you're regulating this, but it's very high. Can't you make it lower? And what's really remarkable is that the oil in the train that derailed in West Virginia was even higher than that standard.
Audio report and transcript.
