Property damage from oil-train derailments through May was nearly triple the total for all of 2013

Oil-train derailments in the U.S. through May caused more than $10 million in property damage, nearly triple the amount during all of last year, Kathryn Wolfe and Bob King report for Politico. The number of accidents is also on a record pace; 70 occurred through May. The total tally for 2013 was 118 incidents, spilling as much as 1.2 million gallons and causing up to $3.5 million in damage.

More oil was spilled on U.S. railways in 2013 than in the previous 37 years combined, and that doesn't count the spillage and 47 deaths from a derailment in Quebec of a train running from North Dakota to Maine. The surge in accidents has led to new safety rules in Canada and a demand for new rules and upgrades in the U.S. as well as more readily available information on what trains are hauling.

This year, "almost every region of the U.S. has been touched by an oil-train incident," Wolfe and King write. "These episodes are spreading as more refineries take crude from production hot spots like North Dakota’s Bakken region and western Canada, while companies from California and Washington state to Missouri, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Florida build or expand terminals for moving oil from trains to barges, trucks or pipelines." (Read more)