From NPR - "Amtrak fights big oil for the use of the rails"

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Let's see - which is more important to the country? A passsenger train that carries a couple hundred people per day, or oil which, in addition to powering just about every car in the world (where alternatives are expensive and/or use more energy and pollution to build and scrap), also powers the heat to keep millions alive during Winter?

Heck, it's Big Oil that powers Amtrak's EB through those frieght lines.

And, where Big Oil makes bazillions, there are years where they have lost bazillions. Meanwhile, the Government makes more money from oil than Big Oil does.

Meanwhile, what about Big Rail? BNSF got HOW much money from the States and Feds and Amtrak to improve the rail up there? And WHO gets the return on that investment? ONLY BNSF.

And I'm a big capitalist pig. But I feel that corporations should be responsible for paying back help when they benefit from it - like Big Auto.
 
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I usually ignore articles which include divisive phrases like "Big Oil" in their headlines.
 
It sure seems like pipelines would be a cheaper, more efficient way to move large amounts of oil over the next several decades. The Bakken isn't going away, it is going to keep moving west and more and more wells will be producing oil. Yet I haven't seen any proposals for new pipelines. Am I missing something? Other than the High Prairie, are there any pipelines in place or being built to move Bakken oil? It isn't like the Bakken production is a surprise, they have been planning on this for more than 10 years. Keystone XL will be moving Canadian oil but would it also have capacity to move Bakken oil? I doubt it but I haven't read anything either way.

Is the old Northern Tier pipeline oil or gas? But again, I think it is set up to move Canadian resources to the gulf coast, not Bakken oil.
 
Guess who opposed the Keystone XL pipeline the most? The scenic state of Nebraska. Who lives in Nebraska? Warren Buffet. What does Warren Buffet have a controlling interest in? Berkshire Hathaway. What does BH own? BNSF. Who's making ALL the money moving the oil? BNSF.

Why on EARTH would BH want to allow a pipeline? That would lose BNSF all kinds of rail revenue.
 
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Ziv said:
Yet I haven't seen any proposals for new pipelines. Am I missing something?
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Yes, you are missing something. The issue is that the oil is being produced now, and pipelines won't be ready for years. I imagine that lots of oil fields get ballyhooed, but it's hard to raise real cash to build a pipeline until the production is actually there, and then there are years of planning, land purchases, and environmental issues. It's the same reason that BNSF wasn't ready for the huge spike in oil shipments. They didn't believe it until they saw it. Hindsight makes things clearer, of course.

VentureForth said:
Guess who opposed the Keystone XL pipeline the most? The scenic state of Nebraska. Who lives in Nebraska? Warren Buffet. What does Warren Buffet have a controlling interest in? Berkshire Hathaway. What does BH own? BNSF. Who's making ALL the money moving the oil? BNSF.

Why on EARTH would BH want to allow a pipeline? That would lose BNSF all kinds of rail revenue.
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Perhaps because Berkshire Hathaway might be moving into pipelines.
 
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It is my understanding that by Federal Mandate, passenger rail traffic has priority over freight traffic.

If that is indeed true, perhaps going to Transportation Secretary Foxx is a good approach. I can see

where freight traffic would slow the Empire Builder, but not stop it.
 
Check out the March issue of Trains Magazine. It has an exhaustive report on the movement of oil by rail. For a lot of reasons, the movement of oil by rail will grow and won't go away. What's needed is an expansion of infrastructure, such as double or even triple-tracking of the BNSF across the Upper Midwest.
 
It would have also helped things if the Feds had approved ND's request to build additional refineries in ND as well. They are expanding one of them, but by refining the oil there it they can move (via pipeline) refined products as opposed to crude oil. Oh, well.
 
montana mike said:
It would have also helped things if the Feds had approved ND's request to build additional refineries in ND as well. They are expanding one of them, but by refining the oil there it they can move (via pipeline) refined products as opposed to crude oil. Oh, well.
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Which projects were refused federal approval? I've heard about a big new refinery over at the Fort Berthold Reservation, but I haven't heard about any federal sticks in the spokes. The article I linked also talked about smaller projects near Trenton and Dickinson.

I'll confess that I don't like the idea of a huge industrial plant in Trenton, so near Fort Union and the confluence of the Missouri and the Yellowstone, but, hey, it's not my land.

It does seem really stupid to export crude oil from ND, then import refined diesel fuel, but it also seems stupid to me to flare gas.
 
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VentureForth said:
And, where Big Oil makes bazillions, there are years where they have lost bazillions.
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Well, actually, no. My family's been investing in oil since the 1910s. Big Oil, as a whole, has made money every year pretty much. It turns out that extracting gunk from the ground (gunk you didn't make and can't make) and selling it, is highly profitable. At least until you start running out of easy-to-extract gunk. Which we are starting to run out of now, so it's time to get off of oil. I've been relocating my portfolio into industries which *aren't* running out of resources.

The Williston basin oil companies, like most frackers, are mostly fly-by-nighters rather than classic "big oil", of course. Fracked fields run out extra quickly, so they attract fly-by-nighters.

Meanwhile, the Government makes more money from oil than Big Oil does.
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Well, it owns most of the land and water the oil came out of. So it should.
 
What is being overlooked here is that even if BNSF had realized in 2008 that the oil train bonanza was real and would last, which I think nobody outside the oil speculators would have been willing to do at that time, the process of getting permission from the various agencies to build anything is so long and convuluted that by the time BNSF got through all the process of writing reports and getting approvals to build anything they would just now be getting the first of the additonal tracks in service.
 
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