A three-judge panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia has vacated a safety rule on transporting liquified natural gas over rail.
The Sierra Club, a group of state attorneys general and others filed an appeal of a rule crafted by the Department of Transportation’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) authorizing LNG’s transportation in newly designed tank cars with no permit required.
“The new final rule … imposed no limit on the number of LNG tank cars that could be included in a single train and set no mandatory speed limit for trains that carry LNG,” said the Jan. 17 decision.
One company was considering a single train with 80 cars carrying LNG, when a group of environmentalists said that the explosive force of just 22 cars full of LNG would be the equivalent of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.
In addition to being highly flammable, LNG has the risk that if its temperature rises, it can expand and place tremendous pressure on tanks leading to an explosion. If it is spilled without igniting, it can form an ultra-cold gas cloud that quickly expands, severely injuring people and damaging property in its path, the court said.
PHMSA determined shipping LNG by rail would have no significant impact on the environment and declined to prepare an environmental impact statement. Sierra Club and other petitioners argued that the National Environmental Policy Act required the agency to craft an EIS and its failure to do so was arbitrary and capricious. The court agreed, vacating the rule for additional proceedings at PHMSA.
Historically, LNG could be transported only by truck or pipeline, and shipping it by train required a special, one-off permit. That changed after President Trump issued an executive order in 2019, which told PHMSA to issue a blanket approval for shipping LNG by rail.
The agency authorized that the fuel could be shipped in tank cars that had been operating on the rails for decades and were designed to carry cold, dense gases. The rules for shipping similar chemicals involved communication, and the rail industry adopted a voluntary speed limit of 50 mph when trains had more than 20 cars with them. PHSMA proposed no such limits to trains hauling LNG.
Opponents criticized the rule for failing to take the risk of an accident seriously and for failing to put a speed limit or a cap on the number of cars. They also argued the train cars to be used, DOT-113 tank cars, had seen 14 breaches in prior incidents and petitioners questioned their record, as did the National Transportation Safety Board.
PHMSA did require some upgrades for the cars to carry LNG, including a thicker outer tank and better steel, calling the new model a “120W9” car. It also authorized the new cars to carry a higher density of LNG, raising it from 32.5% of total volume to 37.3%.
The agency required special monitoring equipment for all LNG cars and required trains with 20 in a row, or 35 in total, to have special braking technology. Railroads also were required to consider safety risk factors such as population density when scheduling LNG shipments.
After President Biden assumed office, PHMSA suspended the July 2020 rule, but it did not complete a replacement.
