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public under state law. Last week, they gave railroads 10 days to seek a court injunction challenging the release of the information.
• An oil-train derailment and explosion in Quebec last July killed 47 people. Subsequent derailments and fires in Alabama, North Dakota, Virginia and New Brunswick have drawn criticism from lawmakers in Congress that transportation officials have not done enough to safeguard against further explosions.
• In response to the accidents, Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx said in last month's order that railroads must provide the details on routing and oil-train volumes to states. The order covered trains hauling a million gallons of oil or more from the Bakken region of North Dakota, Montana and parts of Canada.
• The Bakken's light, sweet crude is more volatile than many other types of oil. It's been involved in most of the major accidents as the crude-by-rail industry rapidly expanded during the past several years.
• Some states have agreed to requests from BNSF Railway, CSX and Union Pacific to keep the information confidential after the railroads cited security concerns. Those include California, New Jersey, Virginia, Minnesota and Colorado.
• Officials in New York, North Dakota and Wisconsin said they still were weighing whether restrictions on the information would violate state open-records laws.
• State officials who questioned the confidentiality agreements sought by the railroads have said the notifications about oil trains were not specific enough to pose a security risk.
• BNSF -- the main carrier of crude oil in many western states -- was notified late Tuesday of Montana's intentions. A representative of the Texas-based company had said in a June 13 letter that BNSF would consider legal action if Montana moved to release the details on oil shipments.
• "We must be cognizant that there is a real potential for the criminal misuse of this data in a way that could cause harm to your community or other communities along the rail route," wrote Patrick Brady, BNSF's director of hazardous materials, in a letter to a senior official at the Montana Department of Environmental Quality.
• Company spokesman Matt Jones said Wednesday that at this time BNSF has no plans to ask a court to intervene.
• While it's important for emergency planners to have the information, Jones added, BNSF will "continue to urge discretion in the wider distribution of specific details."
• A second railroad, Montana Rail Link, submitted notifications earlier this month revealing that its tracks were carrying three oil trains a week along a route from Huntley, Montana, to Sandpoint, Idaho. The railroad said the trains pass through as many as 12 counties across southern and western Montana and through Bonner

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