Officials: Ethanol tanker accidents rare
A fiery train derailment in northern Illinois involving ethanol-filled tanker cars is highlighting the volatility of shipping the flammable fuel additive by rail.
Industry and federal railroad officials say accidents such as the one Friday near Tiskilwa (TIHS’-kihl-wah) are rare, last year involving 50 rail tanker cars out of roughly 316,000 total shipments.
Matt Hartwig of the Renewable Fuels Association trade group says as much as three-fourths of the 13.7 billion gallons of ethanol expected to be produced in the U.S. will be shipped by rail.
Hartwig says that’s largely out of necessity because pipelines aren’t close enough to ethanol producers to make that a practical transportation mode.
He says the industry has been collaborating in recent years with emergency responders on how to effectively deal with such accidents.