US President Joe Biden’s decision to cancel the Keystone XL pipeline is sparking renewed interest in shipping Canadian oil-sands crude by rail, and that comes with its own environmental risks.
A challenge by Canadian Pacific Railway over settlements for victims of a crude-buy-rail oil disaster has been rejected by a judge. The company has been subject to a class action lawsuit following the incident in which 47 people were killed and the main downtown region of a town were destroyed following the derailment of a train.
Aberdeen oil and gas technology firm Petrotechnics has been signed up to help improve the safety of rail workers as part of a national initiative by track owner and operator Network Rail. Petrotechnics specialises in software to improve frontline operational performance and risk management in hazardous industries. Announcing its latest contract yesterday, its said its Proscient system was to be used to increase safety and improve productivity across 20,000 miles of railway by reducing the risk of delays, engineering overruns and spiralling maintenance costs. Working in partnership with the US technology giant Computer Sciences Corporation, Petrotechnics’ input forms part of Network Rail’s Planning and Delivering Safe Work programme, which is introducing safety improvements across the UK rail network.