5/22/14

Trains on politics rail

South Dakota has two state-long east/west railroads: the southern route is currently active only east of the Missouri River.

Genesee & Wyoming, the intended buyer of the business being conducted on the west end of the state-owned track, has a record of dumping Bakken crude. Canadian Pacific currently operates on the right of way that intersects the proposed Keystone XL pipeline at Philip where rail cars carrying diluted bitumen could be loaded then increase traffic through Pierre, Huron and maybe Brookings.
TransCanada Corp is in talks with customers about shipping Canadian crude to the United States by rail as an alternative route as its Keystone XL pipeline project that has been mired in political delays, Chief Executive Russ Girling said on Wednesday. "We are absolutely considering a rail option," Girling told Reuters on the sidelines of a conference in New York. Girling said the firm was exploring shipping crude by rail from Hardisty in Canada, the main storage and pipeline hub, to Steele City, Nebraska, where it would flow into an existing pipeline to the Gulf refining hub. [Catherine Ngai, Reuters, via Huffington Post]
Coal-glutted rail traffic has created a bottleneck in the Powder River Basin and Bakken oil has stalled traffic on Burlington Northern Santa Fe track in both Dakotas.

At least two campaign workers for a former South Dakota governor's US Senate bid could be recipients of a rail deal being negotiated with federal money.

The Sioux Falls Argus Leader is hosting a poll asking whether that town should have passenger rail service.







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