The Wall Street Journal "The Experts" guest column, 11/26:
What’s Wrong With Oil Transport by Rail
KATE GORDON: I recently sat down to dinner with a group of high-level agricultural sector leaders in Minnesota. Again and again, the conversation turned to an issue that’s at the forefront of these business leaders’ minds: the fact that railcars carrying crude oil are displacing cars carrying agricultural goods, resulting in massive delays in shipments of hundreds of pounds of food.
Despite the hoopla surrounding Keystone XL, the fact is that a growing percent of the oil we produce in this country is moving not by pipeline, but by rail. Today we ship 11% of domestically produced fossil fuels by train. One consequence of this boom is the months-long log jam it has created for other industries dependent on rail service. . . .
SNIP
One way to fix this problem is to require the oil industry to invest heavily in rail infrastructure, to ensure there’s enough capacity to move their train loads of oil across the country without creating logjams for other critical commodities, like food.
Kate Gordon (@katenrg) is vice president and the director of the energy and climate program at Next Generation. She previously served as vice president for energy and environment at the Center for American Progress.
Read more here.
