The State of Washington’s House of Representatives has just passed a bill to reduce vapor pressure limits on crude-by-rail shipments through the state. If the bill becomes law, analysts say that it could create cost barriers for Bakken oil producers to ship their oil to the Pacific Northwest and could increase Washington State’s imports of crude from sources other than North Dakota, such as Alaska and Asia. Washington’s House of Representatives approved on Friday an amended bill saying that “A facility may not load or unload crude oil into or from a rail tank car unless the oil has a vapor pressure of less than 9 pounds per square inch beginning two years after the volume of crude oil transported by rail to the facility for a calendar year has increased by more than 10 percent above the volume reported for the 2018 calendar year.” According to the Capitol […]