BP Cherry Point moves to modern rail car fleet

Market: Crude oil, Oil products, Petroleum transportation
13/10/14

BP began only accepting latest-model rail tank cars earlier this month to its offloading facility at its 222,700 b/d refinery in Cherry Point, Washington.

The refiner discontinued loading pre-2011 rail cars with North American light crude for delivery to its roughly 40,000 b/d offloading facility, which began operation at the end of 2013. The refiner will also not accept third-party deliveries of the crude in older rail cars.

West coast refiners have worked to back out Brent-priced imports with light, sweet domestic crudes. But companies must rely on rail to move the crude across the Rocky mountains from midcontinent fields to west coast refining centers.

Efforts to boost these shipments have come amid greater scrutiny and regulatory uncertainty around tank car standards and wariness over the safety of railed crude shipments. Tank cars built before industry-adopted standards developed in October 2011 are more susceptible to rupture under derailments.

Global Partners, Tesoro and PBF Energy have all barred use of the older cars to deliver crude to their terminals and refineries.

eb/tdf

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