Imperial Oil, a Canadian company that is 69.6 percent owned by ExxonMobil, plans to transport 200 Korean-made modules from Lewiston, Idaho to the Kearl Oil Sands in Alberta, Canada. More than half of the modules are 24 feet wide, 30 feet tall, and 162 feet long – each. They weigh up to 344,000 pounds – each. Visually, they are equivalent to a three-story building, 2/3 the length of a football field. Some Idaho residents say that sections of the road upon which they are slated to travel are 23 feet wide.
This is scheduled to happen sometime this fall.
The purpose of transporting these modules is to facilitate production of bitumen, a highly dense and viscous form of petroleum. From the Port of Lewiston, the oversized loads will travel along Highway 12, through Idaho and Montana. The Idaho portion of the highway follows the Wild and Scenic Lochsa River and crosses into Montana at Lolo Pass. The shipments are expected to exceed the legal weight limits for the Idaho stretch of the journey. Idaho transportation officials have said that the shipping company will need to customize the trailer axles to better distribute weight loads. Idaho also says it will require the company to ensure that traffic is not backed up for more than 15 minutes at a time (the Montana requirement is no more than 10 minutes). For this reason, the modules will travel at night when traffic is lighter. The shipping company will also have to add gravel to turnouts to accommodate the wide loads as they let traffic pass, as well as remove overhead power lines whose heights are below 30 feet, many of which will be buried underground.
In Montana, Imperial Oil has commissioned an environmental assessment (“EA”), with a public comment period lasting just over a month. There was no public scoping process as to alternatives. Several alternate routes were considered, but rejected. These include Highway 16 from Prince Rupert, B.C., which was rejected because of a height restriction of a truss bridge, with no way around it. Three possible routes from Vancouver, B.C., were rejected because of height restrictions of a road overpass, an avalanche tunnel, and a train overpass. According to the EA, there are “no possible detours available.” The one U.S. route considered — I-90 – was rejected because of “25 existing overpasses.”
At least half of the “only identified feasible route” (according to the EA) consists of mountainous, winding, highways that pass through scenic, recreational areas – which these enormous modules will cross at night.
A group of citizens in Missoula, Montana, asked for, but did not receive, a 60-day extension on the comment period. The group is also pushing for city ordinances and resolutions that would prohibit the driving of the massive trucks inside city limits. The comment period has now passed, and the state awaits a decision by the Montana Department of Transportation.
In Idaho, an EA is not required for “oversized shipping projects” and the public will have no say as to whether the state approves the shipments.
Many are asking: what’s in it for us? The oil company suggests that the shipments could have positive economic effects in Idaho and Montana. Yet, the equipment is being built in South Korea, will be freighted from Korea across the Pacific and up the Columbia and Snake Rivers by South Korean carriers. The overland shipping company is Mammoet of Holland. The mining takes place in Canada. The State of Montana expects to receive about $1,600 a load from the shipping company. Idaho estimates that it will get about $1,000 per load. These payments, however, will only cover the costs of improvements (i.e., wider turnouts, buried power lines). The only “benefit” seems to be this: Alberta’s oil sands are the United States’ number one source of foreign oil.
But what are the costs? The end result of all of this is to extract more bitumen from the Alberta oil sand fields. The production of oil from tar sands bitumen is resource-intensive: it uses significant amounts of water, which ends up in tailings lagoons containing hydrocarbon sludge that have never been reclaimed. Oil from tar sands contains sulfur and heavy metals, the extraction of which uses large amounts of energy – about 0.6 billion cubic feet of natural gas per day. And the process produces between three and five times the greenhouse gas pollution of conventional oil production, which translates to about 5% of Canada’s overall greenhouse gas emissions. Yes, this affects Canada, but consider this: production of oil from oil sands makes up about 0.1% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. In addition, the oil sands have diminished vast areas of one of the best carbon reduction tools on the planet: Canada’s Boreal Forest. A 2007 Canadian study reports that the Canadian oil sands will not prevent peak oil, the point in time when the maximum rate of global petroleum extraction is reached, after which the rate of production enters terminal decline.
Why is this not a federal issue requiring an environmental impact statement? Apparently, the State of Montana decided that it isn’t and doesn’t. And the State of Idaho decided no regulation was needed whatsoever. How can one state regulate the transport of heavy and oversized equipment and the other not?
Section 102 of the National Environmental Policy Act requires federal agencies to incorporate environmental considerations in their planning and decision-making through a systematic interdisciplinary approach. Specifically, all federal agencies are to prepare detailed statements assessing the environmental impact of and alternatives to major federal actions significantly affecting the environment.
The NEPA regulations define a “major federal action,” as including “actions with effects that may be major and which are potentially subject to Federal control and responsibility.”
Given the size of the modules, it is hard to imagine that their transport would not be an action “with effects that may be major.”
And there several reasons why this project is potentially subject to Federal control and responsibility:
Ø The Lochsa River and middle fork of the Clearwater in Idaho are designated Wild and Scenic River, a federal program.
Ø The Lochsa, middle fork and main Clearwater, and their tributaries provide critical rearing habitat for listed salmon, steelhead, and trout under the federal Endangered Species Act.
Ø Highway 12 in Idaho is designated a Northwest Passage Scenic Byway by the Federal Highway Administration.
Ø Most of Highway 12 is in the Clearwater National Forest.
The Idaho Department of Transportation states that not a single accident of an oversized load has occurred on Highway 12 during the past 15 years. But what if there is an accident? What if one of the modules falls off the road into the river? Potential major problems include blocking streamflows and impairing salmon habitat, fisheries, and the livelihoods of recreational operators; injuring or killing river rafters, fishermen/women, and others using the river areas for recreation and/or livelihood; and highways injuries or deaths if one of these modules comes loose or falls over in the roadway.
The people of Idaho and Montana have had very little opportunity to comment about this massive equipment moving through their states. And when they have commented, their concerns have been largely ignored. This project – which crosses two international boundaries, and travels through four U.S. states – is being solely regulated by the Montana Department of Transportation.
Lawsuits in Idaho may temporarily stall the permitting for this and other such oversized shipping projects. But what is really needed is a full Environmental Impact Statement that seriously examines the impacts and alternatives.
Read the recent “Seattle Times” article and comments about this topic here. To take action, contact Senators Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell.
Thanks for writing about this issue. As a resident of Idaho county and frequent Highway 12 traveler I’m amazed by the nonchalant attitude Mammoet and ITD have towards this massive shipping project (As well as Conoco & Imperial Oil). Highway 12 is a winding, narrow route that sees numerous accidents. Mammoet had a rig recently go into the ditch in Canada for no apparent reason on a straight stretch of road. here’s the link http://www.draytonvalleywesternreview.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?archive=true&e=2737263
There’s no ditch for a rig to do into on a majority of the Idaho 12 route – an accident means the load could end up in the river or stuck sideways across the road – blocking the road for an indefinite period of time until cranes large enough can be brought in – or more likely the load is cut up into small enough pieces to haul it out since the only mobile cranes that are large enough to haul out these massive loads need a wider base to work from than most of highway 12 offers. These are just a few of the examples that are frustrating local people. At the informational poster display held earlier this summer in Kooskia representatives from Imperial Oil misled the public saying a crane could be on the scene from Spokane within 10 hours but their own transportation plan acknowledges no cranes of that size are available in Spokane. . . and of course even if they were they wouldn’t be able to work properly on the most likely strecthes for an accident to occur.