ARCO would also sell 1.1 million exploration acres on the North Slope, a 22.3percentt interest in the Trans-Alaska pipeline and a crude oil shipping fleet of six tankers in service and three under construction.
Over the past two years, the increase in crude oil shipped by rail in the US has bolstered the fortunes of railroads, many of which have seen coal shipments drop substantially.
From 2010 to 2014, the amount of crude oil shipped over rail increased 1300 percent, according to data compiled by AAR.
Here's why we need a timeout: The volume of crude oil shipped by rail in the United States increased from 9,500 carloads in 2008 to 400,000 carloads in 2013 -- a more than 40-fold expansion.
"With the amount of tar sands crude shipped on the Great Lakes by vessel poised to expand as early as 2015, the Great Lakes will soon face a new threat that poses a substantial risk to their future".
SCECO power production plants currently rely on diesel and crude fuel shipped by truck from Aramco's Riyadh refinery to provinces in the north and south; a process that is reported to cost as much as $80 million each year.
Much of its crude is shipped to refineries in Curaçao and St. Croix, where gasoline and other products can be routed to Europe or the U.S., wherever the prices are higher.
It has always processed heavy crude -- shipped in from foreign countries such as Venezuela -- and would not undergo any "change in operations, capacity or throughput," he said.
Although its clear intent was to protect Puget Sound, the Magnuson Amendment to the Marine Mammal Protection Act only limits incoming crude by ship.
Based on more traditional fundamentals like the cost of finding, producing and shipping crude, oil should be in the mid-$60saysays William H. Brown III, an independent energy consultant in Chappaqua, N.Y., who monitors investment flows in the energy sector.
