contents so limited, and closed, so that under conditions normally incident to transportation there will be no identifiable (without the use of instruments) release of hazardous materials to the environment, and further requires that the effectiveness of the package will not be substantially reduced. Under this requirement, offerors must consider how the properties of the material, including temperature and pressure, may affect the packaging. and FRA issued a supplementary safety advisory, Safety Advisory 2013-07, on November 20, 2013, to emphasize the importance of proper characterization, classification, and selection of a packing group for Class 3 materials, and to reinforce the need to follow the Federal hazardous materials regulations for safety and security planning. In addition, PHMSA and FRA initiated Operation Classification in August 2013, which involved unannounced inspections requesting samples of the transported petroleum crude oil and testing the oil samples to verify that offerors of the materials have properly classified and described the hazardous materials. Preliminary testing has focused on the classification and packing group assignments that had been selected. These tests measured some of the inherent chemical properties of the petroleum crude oil collected. PHMSA tested samples of petroleum crude oil, destined for transportation by rail, and determined that some of the samples had been erroneously assigned to a lower packing group by offerors than required under the HMR. As a result of Operation Classification, PHMSA has proposed $93,000 in civil penalties against petroleum crude oil offerors. PHMSA and FRA will continue to test the Bakken petroleum crude oil characteristics to gain information to verify whether the crude oil appears to be classified appropriately under the hazardous materials regulations. FRA has also discovered incidents, and brought enforcement action, where petroleum crude oil was misclassified. FRA audits of crude oil loading facilities indicate that the
contents so limited, and closed, so that under conditions normally incident to transportation there will be no identifiable (without the use of instruments) release of hazardous materials to the environment, and further requires that the effectiveness of the package will not be substantially reduced. Under this requirement, offerors must consider how the properties of the material, including temperature and pressure, may affect the packaging. and FRA issued a supplementary safety advisory, Safety Advisory 2013-07, on November 20, 2013, to emphasize the importance of proper characterization, classification, and selection of a packing group for Class 3 materials, and to reinforce the need to follow the Federal hazardous materials regulations for safety and security planning. In addition, PHMSA and FRA initiated Operation Classification in August 2013, which involved unannounced inspections requesting samples of the transported petroleum crude oil and testing the oil samples to verify that offerors of the materials have properly classified and described the hazardous materials. Preliminary testing has focused on the classification and packing group assignments that had been selected. These tests measured some of the inherent chemical properties of the petroleum crude oil collected. PHMSA tested samples of petroleum crude oil, destined for transportation by rail, and determined that some of the samples had been erroneously assigned to a lower packing group by offerors than required under the HMR. As a result of Operation Classification, PHMSA has proposed $93,000 in civil penalties against petroleum crude oil offerors. PHMSA and FRA will continue to test the Bakken petroleum crude oil characteristics to gain information to verify whether the crude oil appears to be classified appropriately under the hazardous materials regulations. FRA has also discovered incidents, and brought enforcement action, where petroleum crude oil was misclassified. FRA audits of crude oil loading facilities indicate that the
Crude-Oil-Draft-Emergency-Order-revised-02252014-final-post-S10-2-1.docx