INDUSTRY TAKES SHORTCUTS, GOVERNMENT ENFORCEMENT IS LACKING

Yesterday's Waterloo Region Record has the following story "Lac-Magantic train cargo as flammable as gasoline, but not identified properly". So isn't that a surprise that government oversight is lacking while industry self-regulation is MIA (missing in action). Not. Investigaters are trying to determine the motive for the intentional misgrading of the oil. It could be a commercial reason or perhaps an operating one. Regardless the oil was graded properly for it's road transportation and then downgraded for rail transport. The oil in the train came from the Bakken Shale formation of North Dakota. One of the questions facing investigaters is whether the Class 111 tank cars were adequate for the crude oil in reality versus it's downgraded staus. To date investigaters are not stating if the downgraded oil may have contributed to the disaster. What is slowly becoming apparent as with other disasters is that rarely is it a failure of a single component that causes a human disaster. It's usually a perfect storm of errors and or emissions.