Idle Oil Tank Cars

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tsb
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Post by tsb » Sat. May. 13, 2017 8:30 pm

Being certified "scooter trash" I tend to travel the back roads and two lanes. I get to travel slowly and do a lot of looking around. What I see
is hundreds of parked oil tank cars. Route 61 from Leesport to Hamburg is almost solid and I've seen them in Delaware and Maryland. If you google "idle oil tank cars" apparently this is a national problem. Maybe I can get one to store coal ?

https://www.google.com/maps/@40.4859073,-75.9636769,368m/data=!3m1!1e3

 
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Post by plumberman » Sun. May. 14, 2017 6:27 am

there is a ton of them parked out the western part of ny state on rt 17. all painted up and i think idle for about 2 years.

 
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Post by CapeCoaler » Sun. May. 14, 2017 9:43 pm



 
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Post by tsb » Sun. May. 14, 2017 9:54 pm

What is the siding space rental cost ? William ?

 
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Post by lzaharis » Mon. May. 15, 2017 10:17 am

About the oil cars,

Unless it has changed empty privately held railcars are not charged per day by the "railroad" and only charged for the freight movement/switching of the loaded cars and charged a back haul rate to return them to the oil fields when called for by the oil company(s)

A lot of them are also parked in the active switching rail yards with full tanks and held until they can be taken to the refineries or they must wait to be sent back to North Dakota to be filled again. Many of the same 33,000 gallon tank cars are also loaded and waiting to to be shipped to the Canadian refineries in the Maritime provinces or to be trans shipped to Albany, New York and beyond to New Jersey to the refineries down there as well.

With all the shale oil flooding the market they are held in place until they are needed.
The sour crude they have in the Bakken Shale oil fields has lots of methane gas in it and they have to strip more volatile gasses out of it after it is pumped out of the ground and most of the oil has to be trucked to a tank farm with a tank car load out siding away from the oil fields. They were in no hurry to run rail to the oil fields as the oil fields were not quickly developed either and they were buring off the natural gas as they could not store it to refine it and then ship it and the oil lease owners were and still are being screwed and not getting revenue from the gas as it is being burned off.

They have to remove as much of the volatile gasses out of the Bakken shale oil to safely ship it now which is a result of the fire and explosion at Lac Megantic, Quebec, Canada.

Its essentially no different than the herds of idled grain cars owned by Burlington Northern, Canadian Pacific, The Province of Saskatchewan, ADM and others that are cleaned and then being put into storage in rail yards or grain company sidings as they are not needed until harvest time.

The thing is that the tank car companies own the majority of the crude oil cars being used and Carl Ichan and Warren Buffet wholly own or have major stock ownership in the tank car building companies and with Berkshire Hathaway owning BNSF Railway doing most of the oil hauling its a win win for them anyway.

 
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Post by tsb » Mon. May. 15, 2017 11:16 am

Most of the parked cars in this area have been there for at least three or four years. That's a lot of idle capital.


 
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Post by waldo lemieux » Mon. May. 15, 2017 7:46 pm

The Saudi's slashed the price of oil and shale oil isn't viable at the current prices. Our ability to produce this oil is the only reason we have 2.50 gas instead of $5 gas. The fact that we have the capacity to start hauling oil again or shipping it down the Keystone pipeline may just keep the price low until the middle east starts to run out of crude or the Chinese people each buy a Suburban.

 
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Post by top top » Thu. May. 18, 2017 3:46 pm

tsb wrote:Most of the parked cars in this area have been there for at least three or four years. That's a lot of idle capital.
It's just business. I wonder how long they can sit without needing major work before being put into service. I'm guessing decades if they're not in a seaport.

Has anyone noticed all the containers for sale cheap for several years now. Apparently it is because we buy so much junk from China and others, and we no longer export much of anything. They claim it is cheaper to abandon them here and build more than ship them back empty. Seems odd since the boat is still going back, but it does save relocating it back to a port and handling charges, dock receipts, customs inspection, etc. I have seen articles about using them to build "hurricane resistant" homes by welding several together on a slab and finishing them off. Seems they would be great for the "tiny home" fad too. Sturdy, easy to finish as living space, easy to relocate later. One guy I know has about 100 of them in a fenced lot and rents them out for storage for apartment dwellers.


http://www.containerhomeplans.org/2015/04/what-i-wish-id-known-before-building-my-shipping-container-home/

http://tinyhousetalk.com/top-10-shipping-container-tiny-houses/

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