[Vision2020] Megaloads Could Skip U.S. on Rail-Truck CanadaRoute

[Gier, Nicholas]

Hi Roger,

At the first "hearing" in Moscow in June (?) I asked Exxon-Mobil Ken Johnson about alternate routes, and he said that they had used the established "high and wide" corridor from Houston and also the Hudson Bay port for Tar Sands equipment.  

At least two things became obvious to me during the second hearing: (1) Exxon-Mobil ordered the modules from Korea in order to avoid higher costs of unionized manufacture in Alberta; and (2) they ordered them tall because they learned of the Lewiston port and Highways 12 and 200 that had no overpasses and relatively few overhead wires.

I don't know how one combines arrogance and naivete together, but Johnson admitted at the second hearing that they did not expect any opposition(!!!), and at the first hearing Johnson admitted to me that if the modules were stranded in Lewiston then they made a big mistake not having them manufactured in Alberta.

Now Exxon-Mobil is paying metal workers in Lewiston $500,000 per module to have them cut in half so that they can be transported on 95 and the freeways.  Even if they still wanted to stick it to the metal workers union in Alberta, they still could have had the Koreans build them in parts in the first place.  Then they could have used then Houston route or rail from Hudson Bay and then open roads through Central Canada.

I truly hope that the Montana injunction will be made permanent and that Exxon-Mobil be forced to pay for its arrogance.

Keeping Highway 12 Wild and Scenic,

Nick
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