Pipeline Proposal Withdrawn Yellowstone Shelves Plan For New Fuel Line In Montana
After nearly four years and millions of dollars spent on studies, the Yellowstone Pipe Line Co. dropped its bid this week to close a gap in the pipeline that brings fuel from Billings, Mont., to the Inland Northwest.
The company withdrew its application with the Lolo National Forest for a 65-mile pipeline segment through Montana’s Ninemile Valley, Yellowstone announced Tuesday.
Instead, the company plans to continue ferrying diesel, jet fuel and gasoline between disconnected pipeline segments by railroad, originally planned as a temporary measure.
The decision likely won’t lead to higher gasoline prices locally, but Yellowstone officials have said the new line would keep them competitive in regional markets.
Company officials said the government wouldn’t bend from its favorite route: a 140-mile pipeline along Interstate 90 from Missoula to Kingston, Idaho.
But building costs would be unacceptable for Yellowstone’s biggest customers, Exxon Mobil and Conoco Inc., Yellowstone spokesman Larry Springer said.
A U.S. Forest Service environmental review also cost the company more than $5 million, or roughly 400 percent over budget, according to Springer. The agency disputes those figures.
“It certainly is disappointing,” Springer said. “We really wish the decision could have been otherwise.”
Forest Service officials expressed frustration that the process that began in 1996 wasn’t allowed to wrap up as expected this fall.
“It’s been a very long and arduous process,” said Debbie Austin, Lolo forest supervisor. “If there’s any disappointment, it’s that we’re so close to the end and we didn’t get to see it through to conclusion.”
Others say the real reason was an election year gamble: The company pulled the proposal in hopes that a Republican administration in Washington might look favorably on Yellowstone’s favored route through Montana’s Ninemile Valley in a few years.
“YPL thinks it’s a political process,” said Tracy Stone-Manning, executive director of the Missoula-based Clark Fork-Pend Oreille Coalition. “That’s just plain offensive.”
From 1955 until 1995, the pipeline ran 644 miles from Billings to Moses Lake. That year, however, a series of spills led the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes to revoke the lease on 60 miles of pipeline that crosses the Flathead Indian Reservation.
In 1996, Yellowstone filed the permit requesting a new pipeline segment and the government kicked off the environmental review.
Occasionally rowdy public meetings ran the gamut from frustrated refinery workers worried about their jobs to Ninemile residents concerned about risks to the pristine valley.
Tuesday, Ninemile residents were jubilant but wary of political maneuvering, said Huson resident Bette Thisted.
“Of course we’re thrilled,” Thisted said. “But we always expect them to come back.”
Company officials could opt to resurrect the connection proposal but certainly not “in the short term,” YPL’s Springer said.
Yellowstone is requesting that the Forest Service retain all documents related to the rerouting plan for the next five years.
Meanwhile, company officials still want to renew a permit for the aging 54-year-old pipeline from Thompson Falls, Mont., to Kingston, Idaho, and along the North Fork of the Coeur d’Alene River.
The Forest Service must approve a renewed permit under the Mineral Leasing Act but can attach conditions, Austin said.
Yellowstone proposes relocating nearly 10 miles of pipeline away from Prospect Creek, a bull trout stronghold where river erosion eroded the pipe out of the water, leaving it vulnerable to puncture and spills.
The Forest Service will likely add other conditions such as monitoring for leaks, Austin said. A decision is expected this summer.
Stone-Manning, however, said that the company could use the improvements as leverage if the reroute resurfaces.
“If they spend a lot of money there now, in three years how is the Forest Service going to be able to recommend a route that goes nowhere near there?”