August 9, 2011 in Idaho

Company plans to resize, reroute megaloads through Spokane

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Click to view a full-size map of the proposed megaload route.

Imperial Oil/ExxonMobil on Monday announced a new route for the company’s Canada-bound, Korean-made oil field equipment: right through Spokane on U.S. Highway 395 and Interstate 90.

ExxonMobil’s initial plan to move 200-plus megaloads along a twisting, scenic byway in Idaho and Montana has become mired in permitting delays and legal challenges.

The 98 proposed loads taking the Spokane route would be reduced in size, as the company already has done to allow some of its giant loads now stalled at the Port of Lewiston to travel north. Those loads, which were halved in height to fit under freeway overpasses, have traveled on U.S. Highway 95 to Coeur d’Alene, then along I-90 to Montana and up Interstate 15 to Canada.

Fifty giant modules of oil equipment already have arrived at the Port of Pasco by barge, where they’re awaiting approval to be shipped by truck up U.S. Highway 395 to I-90 through Spokane, east to Coeur d’Alene, and then follow the same route as the Highway 95 loads along I-90 and I-15 in Montana to Canada.

“There would be no road closures or road construction,” said Cynthia Bergman White, spokeswoman for ExxonMobil.

ExxonMobil “has submitted detailed transportation plans to regulatory authorities in the states of Washington, Idaho and Montana that minimize public inconvenience, assure safe transport and comply with all transportation and environmental regulations,” the company said in a news release Monday. “Movements will be supported by appropriate traffic control and maintenance/support crews.”

Washington State Department of Transportation spokesman Bill Legg said, “We move a lot of superloads through the state – these are not unusual at all. We move over 7,000 superloads a year in Washington.”

Though the freeway through Spokane is wider, much of the route has two eastbound lanes; loads that are wide enough to take up both of those likely would travel only at night, Legg said. The transportation department received the application six weeks ago and is reviewing it; he said the route has no fixed structures that would impede the loads. Road construction schedules are being checked and bridge and pavement capacities compared.

Chris Allard, senior project manager for ExxonMobil, said the company will continue to pursue permits for the full-sized modules to travel on Highway 12 through Idaho and Montana. “We have met or exceeded the requirements typically imposed on other oversize load shippers that have used the U.S. 12 route,” he said. “However, we will also move forward with alternative routes to maintain project schedules.”

The company already has cut down 33 of the giant loads at the Port of Lewiston. Four reduced-size loads have arrived at the Kearl oil sands project by taking the Highway 95/I-90 route from Lewiston, said Bergman White, the ExxonMobil spokeswoman. At least four more are en route.

With the need to cut down the size of the loads, she said, the total number is swelling from a little over 200 to roughly 350. “We might end up using more than one route, but the goal is to get the equipment up to Canada as quickly as possible.”

Bergman White said the loads now in Pasco are full-size, but are bolted together in a way that should ease their disassembly. Reduced-size loads can be up to 15 feet 10 inches tall, 24 feet wide and 208 feet long, and weigh up to 345,000 pounds.

Only one full-size test load, three stories high and built to mimic the largest of the proposed loads on U.S. Highway 12, has traversed that route from Lewiston to Lolo Pass, Mont., where it remains parked at Lolo Hot Springs awaiting the outcome of regulatory and court fights in Montana.

On narrow Highway 12, the loads are wide enough to block both lanes of traffic and create a rolling roadblock.

The plan has prompted protests and lawsuits, along with support for the project from Idaho Gov. Butch Otter and some Idaho state lawmakers, who passed a law this year to make it harder to sue over such proposals.

Highway 12, a designated state and federal scenic byway, runs along two wild and scenic river corridors dotted with campgrounds, hot springs and historic sites, and roughly follows the route taken by explorers Lewis and Clark into the region two centuries ago.

Seven comments on this story so far. Add yours!

• 

  WillyPeter on August 09 at 6:33 a.m.

  It just makes my whole day to wake up to this “travesty.”

  Buuuut, we gotta do it. Let’s do whatever it takes to get us off middle-east and South American oil.

  On a recent C-Span show featuring several “giants of industry,” with divergent opinions, the consensus agreed that North America - Alaska, Canada, and the U.S. - possessed enough oil, shale/sand, and natural gas to run our energy demands for a hundred years.

  And by then, for sure, we will have developed “alternate” energy sources and oil will be an historical footnote.

  Buuuut, again, for all the reasons we all are aware of, let’s do what we need to do to get self-sufficient. Quit sending billions of dollars to others for resources we have at home. And quit allowing those countries - you know who they are - to blackmail us for Yankee $$$ at will.

  America’s job market will improve, our economy will improve , and our security/defense will improve.

• 

  misjustice on August 09 at 7:35 a.m.

  ^ Ummm, you do know that this equipment is going to Canada, don’t you????

• 

  The_Seer on August 09 at 8:43 a.m.

  1111: Highway 12 does not have those pesky overpasses that required Imperial Oil to disassemble some of the equipment prior to shipping along an interstate corridor.

  I love how “North America” has now entered the argument about having enough resources right “here at home.” Both Canada and Mexico are net exporters of petroleum products and energy independent. We get more oil and natural gas from Canada than any other country. However, those are Canada’s resources, not ours, just like Mexico owns theirs. We just need to learn to live within our energy needs, right? Shouldn’t that be the mantra from the neocon camp… a notion that ties both personal responsibility and energy independence into one nice neat package.

  I used to live near the border of Mexico and went there to fill up all the time at about half the price due to huge subsidies to the CONSUMERS of the products not the PRODUCERS.

  When will humanity wake up and realize the automobile was/is the worst invention ever?

• 

  Orphan on August 09 at 12:19 p.m.

  Our job market would have improved if the equipment had been manufactured in the USA.

• 

  greenlibertarian on August 09 at 12:56 p.m.

  There are no companies in the US or in Canada that can manufacture this equipment anymore.

  S. Korea government, business, and labor made it industrial policy some 40 years ago to dominate the world market for large steel projects, and they have succeeded.

  The oil platform that blew out in the Gulf was made in S. Korea. Major parts of the new Tacoma Narrows bridge were made in S. Korea. The bulk of the new span of the Oakland-Bay Bridge were made in S. Korea.

• 

  WillyPeter on August 10 at 7:51 a.m.

  Oh, gee….guess the ideologues here didn’t get the word. British Columbia and Alberta are now the 51st and 52d states…..:-)

  Most of those of us who grew up in the Evergreen state have known that fact for some time. Canada? Shucks, Canada is “closer” to us, and the NW culture, than is New York, oooor, actually, even California. (more smiles here)

  And for us guys who grew up playing hockey, skiing, fishing, hunting, and socializing with the girls of ‘ol Canada - I was partial to the gals in Nelson, Trail and, of course, Vancouver -
  we’ve always been part of Canada….and they’ve been part of us. We just incorporated Alaska into the mix and called it……….get ready for it………North America. amazin’, huh?

  So, God willing (like that?), we will share Bakken et al, and given a pragmatic, and not political, resolution to our energy challenges, we will all live happily ever after.

• 

  misjustice on August 10 at 8:57 p.m.

  Green stated, “There are no companies in the US or in Canada that can manufacture this equipment anymore.” Anymore. We once could.

  And that is what is wrong with this picture. Springsteen had it right, decades ago, when he sang, “Foreman says ‘these jobs are going boys and they ain’t coming back…”

  We’ve allowed ourselves to be reduced to being just a pass through, a freeway on the “free trade” highway of life…where jobs and profits flow elsewhere. The Transnational Corporations (TNCs) have placed us all on the global jobs auction; where we bid against folks willing to work for pennies on the hour and a bowl of rice.