Video, Story of Bakken Crude Oil Moving To Washington State

Yesterday I linked a Platts' story that a reader sent me about Bakken oil reaching the west coast.

Today, a reader alerted me to a great link at King5.com: Oil boom bringing trainloads of crude oil through Washington.

An oil boom in the Midwest is laying the tracks for a major transportation hub in Washington. Crude is coming here by rail, pipeline and barge, and state agencies have a hard time keeping up with the pace.

Activists have been worried about what proposed coal terminals would do to rail traffic in Washington state, but little attention has been paid to plans to transport.

Washington State Ecology officials have been planning to publish a map showing increasing oil maps across the state. The problem is the new proposals are popping up so quickly they have to keep updating it. Crude oil is already rolling down rail lines through Tacoma and Seattle and more is on the way.

The site at the link has a short video clip.



The article and the caption at the movie suggest that the Washington state officials are having trouble keeping up with all the activity: port and rail. Can you imagine a much smaller state (in terms of population and much less infrastructure) having a whole lot more to deal with: permitting, drilling, fracking, rail transportation, pipelines, the reservation, BLM/the feds, airlines/airports, housing, labor or lack thereof, $17 starting pay for Wal-Mart, and the list goes on and on and on. And here the folks in Washington State are having trouble keeping up with two small aspects: rail, which is pretty much already in place, and ports, ditto.