[Vision2020] Oil Sands Effort Turns on a Fight Over a Road

Fri Oct 22 11:20:19 PDT 2010

It seems that everybody actually GIVES A DAMN about this issue, with two
glaring exceptions . . .

Idaho Governor "Butch" Otter

City Council of Moscow, Idaho

Courtesy of the New York Times at:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/22/business/energy-environment/22road.html?_r
=2
<http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/22/business/energy-environment/22road.html?_
r=2&hp> &hp

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Oil Sands Effort Turns on a Fight Over a Road

By TOM ZELLER Jr.

KOOSKIA, Idaho - As U.S. Highway 12 hugs the serpentine banks of the
Clearwater and Lochsa Rivers here, road signs bear the silhouettes of the
19th-century explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, with Mr. Lewis
pointing off into the distance. 

He is not pointing the way for big oil companies, says Lin Laughy, whose
gravel driveway abuts the road. 

But to Mr. Laughy's dismay, international oil companies see this meandering,
backcountry route as a road to riches. They are angling to use U.S. 12 to
ship gargantuan loads of equipment from Vancouver, Wash., to Montana and the
tar sands of Alberta in Canada. The companies say the route would save time
and money and provide a vital economic boost to Montana and Idaho. 

The problem, said Mr. Laughy, is that the proposed loads are so large - and
would travel so slowly - that they would literally block the highway as they
rolled through. According to plans submitted to state regulators, some of
the shipments would weigh more than 600,000 pounds, stand as tall as a
three-story building, stretch nearly two-thirds the length of a football
field and occupy 24 feet side-to-side - the full width of U.S. 12's two
lanes for much of its course through Idaho. 

Mr. Laughy and his wife, Borg Hendrickson, have sued the state to stop the
shipments by Imperial Oil and ConocoPhillips, arguing that the loads would
threaten the integrity of Idaho's historic portion of U.S. 12, as well as
the safety of communities that depend on it as the main road in and out of
the area. 

National environmental groups and climate change activists are supporting
their efforts, seeing a broader opportunity to stall development of Canada's
oil sands, which they denounce as a dirty source of energy. 

"If you'd asked us six months ago whether we'd be in the middle of all this,
we'd have laughed," said Mr. Laughy, 68, who has the carriage and
countenance of a Santa Claus and conducts heritage tours of the area. "But
we're resigned now to the fact that there's going to be a major war." 

The companies' plans call for the oil field equipment, manufactured in Asia,
to be delivered to the port of Vancouver, then floated on barges for some
300 miles up the Columbia and Snake Rivers to Lewiston in western Idaho.
>From there, the equipment would inch its way along Idaho's stretch of U.S.
12, through the Clearwater National Forest, into Montana and points beyond. 

Imperial Oil, the Canadian unit of ExxonMobil, hopes to move 207 separate
"modules" from a manufacturer in South Korea to its $7.1 billion Kearl Lake
oil sands project near Fort McMurray in Alberta. ConocoPhillips wants to
transport two gigantic coke drums, manufactured in Asia and delivered to
Lewiston in May, down much of the same route to a refinery in Billings,
Mont. 

The proposed route could shave thousands of miles of transportation costs
for such shipments, which might otherwise be forced to travel through the
Panama Canal to overland routes accessed through Houston or New Orleans.
Interstates and other wide highways are typically not an option, in part
because overpasses are too low. 

Transportation officials in Idaho and Montana say that their roads - with
some modifications made and paid for by the companies, including additional
pullouts along the route and raised or buried power lines - could handle the
shipments. The plan calls for the loads to move only at night and in
start-and-stop fashion, going down the road for a short time, then pulling
over to let other traffic pass. For Imperial Oil's trips, it would take the
trucks nine nights to cover the 510-mile route through Idaho and Montana. 

"We have done our level best to ensure, if given approval, that we can move
these modules safely," said Pius Rolheiser, an Imperial spokesman. 

Eighteen-wheelers already traverse U.S. 12 here, which serves as a gateway
to the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness area, one of the largest tracts of
virgin wildland in the contiguous United States. The road is also part of
two national trails tracing routes followed by the Nez Perce tribe and Lewis
and Clark. 

But Mr. Laughy, whose home sits on a ridge above U.S. 12, about 75 miles
east of Lewiston, says the oil equipment is different. He points to thin
margins of error along U.S. 12, where the road slices a tight path between
rising rock walls on one side and a quick drop-off to the river on the
other. He also fears that sooner or later, an emergency vehicle rushing
toward a fire or delivering someone to a hospital will be slowed by the
meandering shipments, potentially costing lives. 

"The companies say they have no plans to make this a permanent corridor," he
said. "But once the first shipment is allowed, what's to stop the next one,
and then the next one?" 

Supporters of the shipments say they would inject millions of dollars into
struggling rural economies along the route. "This wouldn't be just an
economic benefit for Lewiston," said David Doeringsfeld, manager of the Port
of Lewiston, "but for all of north-central Idaho." 

Mr. Doeringsfeld said he had been approached by several other companies
interested in using the corridor. 

In May, Mr. Laughy and Ms. Hendrickson started a Web site called Fighting
Goliath, which serves as a clearinghouse of information related to the
megaloads, as the shipments are called. The site has since drawn the
attention of regional and national environmental activists, and a movement
has mobilized around the goal of stopping the loads. 

"I have never really seen so many people have such a unified voice against a
project," said Nick Stocks, a co-founder of Northern Rockies Rising Tide, a
climate change advocacy group in Missoula, Mont., which is also on the
proposed route. 

Environmentalists abhor Canada's oil sands - a gooey mixture of sand, clay
and bitumen that can be refined into crude oil - as an energy-intensive and
highly polluting energy source that generates large amounts of greenhouse
gases. 

But the oil sands are also one of the largest sources of foreign oil for the
United States, and they are poised for further development. A proposed
pipeline awaiting approval by American officials would add 1.1 million
barrels of Canadian oil to the roughly two million already imported to the
United States each day - much of it from the tar sands. 

No permits have been issued yet in Montana. But when the Idaho
Transportation Department granted a permit to ConocoPhillips in August, Mr.
Laughy and Ms. Hendrickson, joined by a neighbor down the road and
represented by the environmental law firm Advocates for the West, promptly
sued the department, arguing that it had failed to adequately consider the
safety and convenience of the public, as its own rules stipulate. 

A lower court agreed. The case now rests with the Idaho State Supreme Court,
which heard arguments on Oct. 1. and is expected to render a decision any
day. 

Meanwhile, both sides seem confident that they will prevail. Imperial has
already floated the first of its 207 modules up the river to Lewiston, and
it plans to move 40 of them there by early December. 

Mr. Laughy, meanwhile, said that even if the court ruled against him, other
obstacles - legal and physical - would probably emerge to stop the
shipments. 

"We're really very nice people," Mr. Laughy said. "Unless you're a big oil
company." 

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Linwood Laughy and Borg Hendrickson are fighting the oil companies that want
to truck huge equipment along a small highway near their house.  

22road-articleLarge.jpg

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2010/10/22/business/22road/22road-articl
eLarge.jpg

Seeya at the polls, Moscow.

Tom Hansen

Moscow, Idaho

"This is the 'Mouse that Roared,' 'David and Goliath' and 'Avatar' all
rolled into one.  We must remember that the thousands of citizens involved
in this effort to protect their personal and family safety, their businesses
and their lifestyles are confronting some of the largest international
corporations in the world."

-  Linwood Laughey

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