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Show Alasfian Oil May I Assist Eniailroads j: The Alaskan oil could : become a Niagara of gold for the western railroads when the oil begins to reach California and other west coast ports around mid-1977. GOVERNMENT and petroleum pe-troleum experts predict that the flow of Alaskan oil will give the west coast a surplus , of 400,000 to 500,000 barrels a ' day. Latest projections indicate in-dicate that Alaska-will ship -1.2 million barrels per day. The oil will move by pipeline from the north slope to the port of Valdez on Alaska's south coast. Oceangoing Ocean-going tankers then will haul it to Oregon and California ports. THE EXPECTED surplus has created a dilemma on how to reship the crude oil from west coast ports to refineries and pipelines in the southwest, mid-west and the Great Plains for eventual . transshipment to the eastern half of the U.S. The dilemma centers on the fact that, according to current estimates, it will take between two to five years to build and upgrade existing pipelines to transport the fuel between the west coast and the refineries. RAILROAD officials believe oil shipped on newly-.developed newly-.developed TankTrains could be competitive with the pipeline, the predominant method for moving crude oil within the U.S., because markets they are aiming for are not connected to the west coast by pipeline. Four railroads are presently in a position to move this surplus Alaskan oil: the Missouri Pacific, the Southern Pacific, the Santa Fe and the Burlington Northern. THE CONCEPT for the railroad TankTrain was initiated ini-tiated by General American Transportation Corp., a subsidiary sub-sidiary of GATX Corporation. This company is the largest U.S. lessor of freight cars with 62,000 cars in its domestic domes-tic fleet of which 52,000 are tank cars. Marcus S. Kostolich, a spokesman tor General American, said the introduction introduc-tion of the TankTrain involved a major breakthrough in tank car technology. IT FEATURES a system of interconnecting hoses, special valves and sensing devices that permit a string of cars to be filled or emptied in a continuous con-tinuous flow from a single connection. For example, he said a two-man crew can load or unload a 90-car TankTrain in five hours. A similar conventional conven-tional train would require 12 men and 10 hours to load or unload. KOSTOLICH said these TankTrains, which can be loaded or unloaded at an average rate of 3,000 gallons per minute, eliminate the need for extensive terminal equipment such as multiple position loading racks, manifold piping and below grade pits. A conventional pump is all that is needed to move liquid into a TankTrain from a storage tank, tanker or barge and a minimum amount of trackage is required. INDUSTRY officials said without development of the unit TankTrain, railroads would not have had much chance to get in the oil business, even on an interim basis. Economic advantages of the unit train were discovered more than a decade ago through movement of coal in a train made up entirely of hopper cars and operated as a single unit between coal fields and utility plants. GATX studies show the estimated es-timated cost of loading and unloading its TankTrain, including facility and operating operat-ing costs at two cents a barrel. It costs 12 to 14 cents for the same operation for a conventional tank car. At present time, there are 170,000 tank cars in the U.S. but most haul liquids other than oil. Petroleum products account for only 1.2 percent of all commodities transported by rail. |