IMO, Internal combustion is causing all these rail tankers jumping off the rails.

[CK_John]

To me the untreated crude is of mix of high octane and bulk crude without any stabilizer. This is no secret to the railroads who are shipping this crude all over Canada and the US, it's just saving pennies and screw the environment and any poor jerk who happens to be in there way.

IMO, they are igniting and then are thrown off the tracks, not jumping the rails and catching on fire.....

[NYC_SKP]

1. Untreated crude, by definition, is not "of high octane".

Now premium gasoline or jet fuel, distillates of crude oil, are quite volatile but I wouldn't consider crude oil so flammable that it would spontaneously combust.

[CK_John]

4. Texas requires fracking crude to be stabilized because it contains mixture of high

volatility and unknown elements.

[ffr]

2. Actually high octane is technically less volatile than regular.

By definition the higher the octane the slower it burns when ignited, as compared with regular octane. Octane modifiers result in making fuel burn and resist exploding or detonating during normal combustion. That's why you run high octane when you pull a heavy boat behind your truck on a hot day and it's usually unnecessary otherwise. You don't use premium to gain power, you run it because it lessens the chance of pinging.

You may be surprised to know that regular gasoline has a few thousand more BTUs than premium, which is consistent with it not having as much octane modifiers present.

Octane is one of the most over used misunderstood words in the auto industry. Marketing is what makes premium sound like it's better for your engine, when the fact is, that regular is probably better in the long run for most street vehicles. The difference is how much the oil industry can convince you in stereotypes and slick advertising with words like 'high-test' 'put a tiger in your tank' and 'premium,' that those octane modifiers causing slower burn will somehow make you think that you're putting 'better' or 'more powerful' or 'more volatile' gasoline into your vehicle. You're not, it's just the opposite. They're just emptying your wallet because you didn't look into it.

The second most common misconception is mid-grade gasoline. Consumers think there's another tank in the ground at the gas station and often forgo choosing it because, 'I mean, come on! Who uses mid-grade? That crap is old. It's gotta be old sitting down there right?' Nope! There's no mid-grade tank underground. Mid-grade is dispensed as a metered mixture of regular and premium together in a quantity that would give you the octane advertised as mid-grade. That's all.

You can Google that too.

[Mugu]

3. Hear, hear! n/t