Rail Transportation of Crude Oil, and More from CRS
A recent boom in U.S. production of crude oil is generating some stress on the transportation infrastructure, according to a new report from the Congressional Research Service.
“The rapid expansion of North American oil production has led to significant challenges in transporting crudes efficiently and safely to domestic markets—principally refineries—using the nation’s legacy pipeline infrastructure,” the CRS report said.
“While oil by rail has demonstrated benefits with respect to the efficient movement of oil from producing regions to market hubs, it has also raised significant concerns about transportation safety and potential impacts to the environment.”
See U.S. Rail Transportation of Crude Oil: Background and Issues for Congress, February 6, 2014.
Other CRS publications that have been withheld by Congress from online public distribution include the following.
The Specialty Metal Clause: Oversight Issues and Options for Congress, February 6, 2014
Federal Reserve: Unconventional Monetary Policy Options, February 6, 2014
The current lack of public trust in AI risks inhibiting innovation and adoption of AI systems, meaning new methods will not be discovered and new benefits won’t be felt. A failure to uphold high standards in the technology we deploy will also place our nation at a strategic disadvantage compared to our competitors.
Using the NIST as an example, the Radiation Physics Building (still without the funding to complete its renovation) is crucial to national security and the medical community. If it were to go down (or away), every medical device in the United States that uses radiation would be decertified within 6 months, creating a significant single point of failure that cannot be quickly mitigated.
The federal government can support more proactive, efficient, and cost-effective resiliency planning by certifying predictive models to validate and publicly indicate their quality.
We need a new agency that specializes in uncovering funding opportunities that were overlooked elsewhere. Judging from the history of scientific breakthroughs, the benefits could be quite substantial.