Big oil’s rolling through ID

[near horse]

There has been a fight of sorts, albeit an unfair one at best, here in Idaho and Montana. The oil companies Conoco/Phillips and Exxon/Mobil, working behind the public scene over the last 2 yrs, worked a deal to allow them use of 100+ mile stretch of hwy designated as a wild and scenic corridor, to haul well over 200 massive loads of oil processing equipment, most to the tar sands area in Alberta Canada.

The details of these agreements were kept secret until the final arrangements were being made and a local citizen found out. Since that time there have been hearings etc but it truly is the David (local people w/ limited financial resources to litigate) vs Goliath (you can imagine the size of an oil company’s legal department and bank account). Well, the locals fought the good fight but our transportation department and Gov had already made the commitment to doing this regardless of public sentiment and it’s starting tonight Feb 1.

While I am not surprised by the results, it truly saddens me and increases my cinicism about the public’s ability to direct growth etc in the face of large money. For example, Conoco/Phillips and Exxon/Mobil launched a media campaign on the radio airwaves in the Boise area (the most populated region of ID) spreading misinformation.

I know I’m going on about this but it really is a sad statement on where we are as a democratic society. Below I’ve posted a comment from a local state rep here who was instrumental in forcing the companies and transportation department to hold open public meetings regarding these shipments.

Highway 12–Megaloads–It looks like the huge Concoco megaloads will
soon be moving over Highway 12 hauling oil refining equipment to Canada.
Conoco/Exxon have a number of slick radio ads defending the movement of
the megaloads here in Boise, and they are filled with deceptive and
inaccurate information. The ads state the companies have been working for
two years with local citizens to prepare for the move. The Truth is the
deal with the oil companies was signed in D.C. in January 2009 by our
Governor and Congressional delegation and the first local citizens knew
about this was in April 2010.

a). All costs are paid by Conoco/Exxon — In May at the informational
meeting in Moscow a group of us asked ITD employees if the $1,500 permit
fee covered all of ITD’s administrative, technical and legal costs. The
ITD employees told us there was no way that ITD’s costs were being
completely covered. I asked Director Ness of ITD the same question and
in a letter he said, “At this time we are unable to answer your question.”
The Truth is that the Idaho taxpayer is paying for part of the cost for
the privilege of letting the oil companies transport their megaloads over
Highway 12.

b. Job creation — Conoco/Exxon brag about job creation in America, but
when Exxon officials were asked who has the contract to move the megaloads
the answers were a Dutch company. The building of the oil refining
equipment was done in Korea instead of the U.S. or Canada.

c. Highway 12 is the only route to ship the equipment — Exxon
officials told us at the hearing in Moscow that this was the case.
Investigation in Canada revealed that the shipments could have made by
rail with transloading around railroad tunnels using cranes. When
confronted with this information Exxon officials then said, “Well Highway
12 is the most economical route.”

d. Public Safety — The Idaho State Patrol today has fewer patrolmen
than in 1969. Yet at least 4 IPS patrolmen will be escorting each load
and others will be serving in a support role. This raises the issue of
the ability of the ISP to protect its citizens around the state when the
loads are moving.

e. Economic Development — The ads promote great economic development
for Idaho. The fact is that much of the impact will be like a circus
coming to town. Here today and gone tomorrow with some slight economic
activity with food and lodging with almost no long term job creation.
The long term job creation will ITD hiring more employees and contractors
to repair the damage caused by 274 loads (and more to come)

There are a few of us that will be going out tonight to monitor the loads and make sure that they do meet the letter of their “agreement” because our own state agencies sure aren’t going to do it.

FYI

Excerpt from: Exxon’s Profit Rises in Quarter, Helped by Higher Oil Prices By Clifford Krauss, The New York Times, Jan. 31. 2011
>>
>> HOUSTON — Exxon Mobil, the largest American oil company, reported a 53 percent increase in its fourth-quarter profit on Monday,…
>>
>> Exxon Mobil’s profit in the quarter was $9.25 billion, or $1.85 a share, compared with $6.05 billion, or $1.27 a share in the quarter a year ago. Analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters had expected $1.63 a share. Total revenue in the quarter was $105.2 billion, up from $89.8 billion in the quarter a year earlier.
>>
>> For the year, Exxon Mobil made $30.46 billion, or $6.22 a share, compared with $19.28 billion, or $3.98 a share, in 2009. Revenue in 2010 rose to $383 billion from $310 billion the previous year….
>>
>> “Exxon Mobil remains well positioned to maximize shareholder value,”….
>>

[mitchmaine]

a few years back, they sunk some natural gas wells off sable island up off the maritimes, and carved a 100’swath 400 miles across the state of maine (pipeline) on their way to montreal and boston.
nobody got a chance to complain. they were paid peanuts for the easement. they weren’t allowed to cut their own wood on the rightofway. and it was an enviornmental disaster. i know cause they missed my farm by a mile or two, but not my friends and neighbors. they drug an oil truch up the rightofway through mud and stumps to fuel an excavator and ripped off a fitting on the truck and dumped 500 gallons of number two on the ground.
but…”don’t worry, we have some of our best men working on it now.”

[jac]

I fear that as “peak oil” deepens, and oil gets harder to get, the world will forget the wilderness and sensitive areas in desperation to keep cars and our modern way going.. at any cost..
John

[goodcompanion]

@jac 24407 wrote:

I fear that as “peak oil” deepens, and oil gets harder to get, the world will forget the wilderness and sensitive areas in desperation to keep cars and our modern way going.. at any cost..
John

And God help anything or anyone that stands between the corporations and a resource even as meager as the tar sands.

[blue80]

Just got back from a drainage board meeting late last night. One of the topics of “discussion” which turned somewhat heated between neighbours, was that one neighbour cleaned a drain ditch on anothers property with a trackhoe. Trackhoe run by a new operator, started at the high end of the ditch and worked down, and got too deep. Hit an old 4 inch oil line, nothing was coming out, and he kept digging. As the ditch later filled with water, the water went into this 4 inch pipe, which it turns out follows the lay of the land going downhill. Water goes down this pipe, oil rises on top of the water and forces its way out the top, high end-into a canal, into the river. So homeland security and marathon and all kinds of people show up initially to clean up the mess which was reported by the newspaper to be 3 barrells worth of oil. Long story short, after the initial shock of oil, everyone packed up and left and the landowner was left with nothing repaired, remediated, or solved. Nobody knows whos pipe it was, the oil company from 1930 is gone, nobody does anything else about it….
Go back a year, when we had a trackhoe. I was hired to install agricultural drains on farmland, and kept running through 3 inch iron pipe, with black soiled ground surrounding the pipe for 2 ft diameter. I was told they were “abandoned” pipes but obviously they had slow leaks for years before they were abandoned….
One of my last jobs with the trackhoe; A large lake of several hundred acres had an outlet which is piped a few miles under a town, to a river. This outlet area over time built higher and higher with pussy willows, raising the level of the lake many feet and flooding neighbours out. I was hired to trench around the swamp and drain the lake. Turns out this lake was “treated” water from the local oil company. Strange fact of the matter, in a couple days of digging, I wasn’t bit by a single mosquitoe in the swamp, though loading up the machine in the nearby hayfield, the mossys tore me up. The lake was too toxic for mosquitoes to breed. An oily stench, with greasy bleed water, rose from the spoil piles I created. I cried a little sold the trackhoe and haven’t looked back. Except maybe just for a minute when I hand dug a hole to bury a draft horse this summer…
From what I’ve seen, BIg Oil rapes the land, on every scale imaginable. I have not yet seen them do otherwise. I hope I can be part of the solution someday…

[J-L]

We had a run in with an old pipeline here in Bridger Valley. Just a couple miles up the creek from my place somebody noticed oil standing in the borrow pit along the highway. It had come up and was starting to head down irrigation ditches in a hay meadow owned by one of my neighbors. The return flow on these ditches goes right back into the creek, but it didn’t quite make it there. The pipeline company is still working on reclaiming that hay meadow (which is/was a very productive piece of ground) but it has been a long and costly ordeal.
What is most scary about this is that had it occurred just 100 yards further down line it would have ruptured right in the creek channel.
Even more alarming is thinking about all the aging oil lines criss crossing the state and country. They will rust out eventually and many are owned by smaller pipeline companies like the one owning this pipeline. The cost of this small cleanup nearly bankrupted this pipeline company. What’s going to happen when the big leaks start springing up every where?

[Big Horses]

I’m not trying to start a huge argument here….but what’s the hurt of having the loads run down the hiway? I’m not sure what the exact reasoning is here. The few trucks are going to pump out less pollutants than the mess of cars and motorhomes that roar through there all summer long… they’re going at night to try to lessen traffic impacts, the only changes that are going to be made are to enlarge and strengthen a few pullouts, to minimalize the impact of them being there…. I just don’t get it.??? It’s not like they’re going to fire up the coke drums enroute or anything. What part am I missing? We all hate to pay more at the pump for gas, yet we complain and stand in the way of any attempt to become less dependent on foreign oil. I must be missing something.
John

Like I said, I’m looking for an explaination, not a fight.

[Robert MoonShadow]

I live about 40 miles from Hwy 12, use it constantly to get to Montana wildernesses to work – often travel it late at night. No local businesses are open then, so they won’t benefit from “all these guys” (about a dozen per trip!) to spend their money to increase the local economy.
The basics here are
1) This was done behind closed doors and w/out input from the locals
2) No one likes to be confronted w/ a “done-deal” by the government that effects them directly
3) Although it MAY be safe, this is desiginated a scenic byway – it’s supposed to be as natural as possible, and parts of the rivers and mountains were tampered with when the pullout areas and some culverts were widened or changed.

180 miles north, is Interstate 90 which is a much more direct route…but the Feds wouldn’t let them use it, and if the Feds won’t – on a road designed for just such heavy traffic – well, it makes you wonder, ayuh? Governor Butch Otter is on public record on 2008 stating that it WILL be done, and the entire weight and “authority” of the state of Idaho will guarantee it. Mainly, its come down to the issue of politicians in the pocket of big corporations rubber-stamping and greasing the skids for companies that just happen to have made big contributions to them.
I have to look up and see the mountains to remind myself I’m not in Chicago anymore. At least there, it’s normal behavior and just the way things are done. But here in a small rural state in the West…?

[near horse]

I posted a long response/commentary on this yesterday but somehow lost it – probably ’cause I stayed up all night Tuesday/Wed helping some folks “monitor” the first megaload to make sure it was in compliance with the agreed upon regulations. One of which says that a traffic delay is only defined as a complete cessation or stoppage of movement NOT a significant reduction in travel speed (In other words – 1 mph on a designated 60 mph hwy is NOT recognized as a delay).

I have to hurry as I’m going to visit a farmer who grows camlina (like mustard) and uses some of the seed to power his equipment (processes the seed of course). So, for a really cool picture depicting the plight here in ID, check out the picture made for these T-shirts. I’m not asking you to buy one – that’s up to you but I really enjoyed that picture! To see the size of these units (675,000 pounds , 28 ft wide, 200 ft long w/ 100 tires under them) you can go to the website http://www.fightinggoliath.org – I probably mentioned this before.

http://www.cedarcreekcreations.com/pages/nobigoilpermits.html

[near horse]

These megaload jokers are now stopped waiting for anticipated bad weather to pass – they need roads with exposed pavement from fog line to fog line. And who’d expect snow in the Rockies in Feb at 4 -5000 ft elevation? Lewis and Clark did but not an oil company in the 21st century? Ha ha ha. This is why nobody trusts these guys.

I should note that Idaho State Patrol carded a number of folks who were monitoring this clusterf… because they said there was a threat of terrorism:eek: Malicious harassment is the correct term. Unless ….. my real name is Osama bin Pritchard – hoo hoo hoo haa haa haa!

Sharp curve slows megaload; new plan needed for next load
Second leg ends at Kooskia after some traffic delayed by as long as 59 minutes by Elaine Williams, Lewiston Tribune, Feb. 4, 2011
Traffic was delayed by as much as 59 minutes in the second day of the three-week journey … The extended delays surfaced as the supersized cargo went around an extremely sharp curve between Greer and Kamiah on U.S. Highway 12, said Adam Rush, a spokesman for the Idaho Transportation Department.

The oversized load is supposed to allow traffic to pass every 10 to 15 minutes. Some delays on the Wednesday-Thursday leg were as small as four minutes, but 10 delays were 16 to 59 minutes, Rush said. ITD is requiring a new plan for getting through the most difficult spot before it will allow a second load to depart Monday, …

The load … arrived at Kooskia by about 5:15 a.m. Thursday, marking the end of the second leg of the trip that went less smoothly than the first, Rush said.

[jac]

Hey John being less dependant on foreign oil doesnt make for cheap prices at the pumps.. we have north sea oil and pay some of the highest prices around. Drill for oil in deserts and out at sea… fine.. but the Rockies !!!!!:eek: I have to agree with Geoff on this one.. we were told when the first of the nuclear power stations were put in that “electricity would be to cheap to measure on a meter” … uh hu:rolleyes: I think the bottom line is that peak oil is biting hard now and the oil industry is getting desperate and we all have to knuckle down and get on with it.. and Im a huge fan of those big old V8 muscle cars btw but accept they have had their day:D:(… even the latest Shelby has a V6….
John

[mstacy]

One can only wonder what George Washington Hayduke would make of all this.

[Big Horses]

@jac 24516 wrote:

Drill for oil in deserts and out at sea… fine.. but the Rockies !!!!!:eek: I have to agree with Geoff on this one..John

Thing is John, this isn’t about drilling. It’s about a bunch of coke drums and parts being hauled to an already existing refinery in the Southern part of Montana. No drilling involved. Amazingly, the news station in Missoula, MT did a question/poll last week on the subject of letting them haul the parts through MT and over 78% replied YES! and Missoula is a pretty “green” town. I just don’t see much of a justifiable argument for not letting them haul it, personally. The road has already been there, was put there a long time ago, and has been a pretty heavily used truck route for many years (I hauled hundreds of loads over the route, grossing well over 100,000# along with LOTS of other trucks). There is minimal impact caused by the hauling of these parts, other than a bunch of people getting all riled up and causing delays with frivilous and costly (to me as well as all taxpayers) court battles and such. If there were damage being done, or drilling, or something like that, I’d be much more apt to agree with them…but it’s not.
Just my opinion. I’ve tried to keep my mouth shut about how I feel, as I’m sure it’s going to result in a rave from a few, but the false info needs to be addressed.
John

[near horse]

@Big Horses 24645 wrote:

Thing is John, this isn’t about drilling. It’s about a bunch of coke drums and parts being hauled to an already existing refinery in the Southern part of Montana. No drilling involved. Amazingly, the news station in Missoula, MT did a question/poll last week on the subject of letting them haul the parts through MT and over 78% replied YES! and Missoula is a pretty “green” town. I just don’t see much of a justifiable argument for not letting them haul it, personally. The road has already been there, was put there a long time ago, and has been a pretty heavily used truck route for many years (I hauled hundreds of loads over the route, grossing well over 100,000# along with LOTS of other trucks). There is minimal impact caused by the hauling of these parts, other than a bunch of people getting all riled up and causing delays with frivilous and costly (to me as well as all taxpayers) court battles and such. If there were damage being done, or drilling, or something like that, I’d be much more apt to agree with them…but it’s not.
Just my opinion. I’ve tried to keep my mouth shut about how I feel, as I’m sure it’s going to result in a rave from a few, but the false info needs to be addressed.
John

The issue with the CP loads headed to Billings is that they are being identified as “the test case” for opening this highway up to this type of traffic – 207 more form Exxon Mobil, 60+ more from a Korean oil company and others chomping at the opportunities being promoted.

You can’t say that the damage will be minimal as even ITD admits they’ve never ever had a load even close to this size travel this route (or any other in ID for that matter).

Here’s the poll from the Helena paper – note: while the yeas did outweigh the nays, it was hardly 78% ( more like 56%)and it’s an unscientific sample (not random) so hardly indicative of true public sentiment – either way.

The online voting in our unscientific poll came out in favor of allowing the vehicles to pass through Montana, with 823 votes in favor of allowing the project and 635 opposed. But the majority of the comments we received were from people opposed to the project.

Also, 100,000# is a far cry from 675,000# in anyone’s book. Heavily used is a relative term. The 207 loads Exxon/Mobil plans to send will also take 4 days to make the trip over the pass and, since they’re not supposed to have 2 rigs on the route at the same time, that’s 828 straight days or more than 2 years of loads that size every single day. Since it’s unlikely they’ll be able to travel every day, we’re probably looking at close to 3 years of traffic to complete that one contract, with more to follow. I doubt even you would want that travelling through your neck of the woods.

Please identify the said “false info”.

The delays cost you nothing as a taxpayer as CP is footing the whole bill for the legal actions/defense on behalf of the state of Idaho.

While I don’t know what kind of organized response may have been generated by CP to this poll, I do know they bussed over a load of employees from Billings to the Boise hearing, complete with CP T-shirts. That’s at least 400 miles one way and I doubt those folks were “off the clock” for the couple of days they were present. That is completely different than a gathering of citizens taking off work to show support for stopping the shipments from using this route.

BTW – our Gov said if we don’t allow these shipments, we’ll have $5 gas. So I guess he’s going to pick up the tab when gas hits $5 AND these shipments go through.

[tsigmon]

([The delays cost you nothing as a taxpayer as CP is footing the whole bill for the legal actions/defense on behalf of the state of Idaho.)]

Who pays for the “court” , Judge , jury, court house, security……?

[Author]

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