The mountain roads of Idaho don’t normally figure into transnational commerce, but one highway in the northern half of the state has become the focal point of plans to launch new oil development in Canada’s lucrative tar sands.
As The New York Times reports, the proposal is for ExxonMobil to ship oil field equipment from Asia to a port in Vancouver, Wash., haul them across the Pacific Northwest by boat to Idaho, and then by truck up to its Kearl Lake project, near Fort McMurray, Alberta. ConocoPhillips also has plans to utilize the road to supply a refinery in Billings, Mont., with production equipment.
Local residents of Idaho towns straddling U.S. 12, which would carry the giant loads, complain that they are far too large for the highway to accommodate them, and worry about safety risks, such as emergency vehicles being unable to pass on the narrow road.
After a lower court ruled that the proposal did not adequately take public safety into account, the future of the plan is now in the hands of the Idaho Supreme Court, which heard the case on October 1 and could rule any time.
Some of the shipments will be more than 24 feet wide, equal to the entire width of the road’s two lanes for much of the path it cuts through Idaho. Some of the loads will be roughly 60 yards long, three stories tall, and weigh about 600,000 pounds. Adding to the worries, because of their size the trucks will move at a crawl.
Local residents are ready to fight the plan. “[W]e’re resigned now to the fact that there’s going to be a major war,” Linwood Laughy, who lives in a house overlooking U.S. 12, told The Times.
State officials say that with certain modifications, such as additional pullouts along the route, the highways will be well equipped for the loads. Oil officials are eager to see that happen because the alternate route — through the Panama Canal from Asia, and then overland from Houston or New Orleans — will add thousands of miles to the journey.
Environmentalists are joining Laughy and company in the fight, though for different reasons. Tar sands spur heated opposition from environmental groups because they require a great deal of energy to develop, and generate a great deal of pollution.
Laughy says that even if the court decision goes against him, the fight is going to continue. “We’re really very nice people,” he said. “Unless you’re a big oil company.”
