Parry Sounds ~ Ideas and Opinions, In and Around Parry Sound

A recent post on the Railroaded’s Blog does a nice job of highlighting the issues surrounding the transport of crude oil by rail. It looks as though CN and CP are looking at this as a business opportunity given the pressure that is being brought to bear on the oil companies trying to build new pipelines. It seems pipelines carry less environmental peril than the use of rail lines for transporting crude oil. But if you are opposed to the building of a pipeline in your community, and you don’t have a rail line nearby, you’ll be quite happy to have the oil shipped by rail. Not in my backyard.

Well we do have rail lines quite literally in our backyards, and it seems they are being used to ship crude through our town. I’ve been told it’s oil from the Bakken Formation in Saskatchewan. If you doubt that it’s the case take a look at the photo below from last month. It’s not just one or two tankers. And given the near derailment last week in Nobel, we need to think not if, but when. Let’s hope that if we have a derailment in town it will be rail cars carrying expensive imported cars not millions of liters of crude oil.