Canadian Crude Oil May Still Be Shipped on Misclassified Rail Cars

More than a year after a runaway train carrying diluted bitumen incinerated downtown Lac Mégantic, Québec, Canada’s Transportation Safety Board “is raising concerns that dangerous crude oil could still be travelling by rail inside misclassified tank cars,” the Globe reports, “despite assurances from the federal government that the problem has been fixed.” The TSB said new testing and classification requirements fail to address variability among shipments, including producers’ practice of blending different products before they hit the rails. “While the properties of manufactured dangerous goods, such as gasoline, are better understood and relatively predictable, the agency warned that crude oil and natural gas can vary from one well to another and in the same well over time,” Mackrael and Robertson write.(h/t to iPolitics for pointing us to this story)