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Editorial- Court delays threaten refinery project
Opinion | Billings Gazette | August 31, 2010
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We hope that the Idaho Supreme Court will rule promptly on the appeal of a District Court ruling that put the brakes on ConocoPhillips’ plan to move oversized loads of refinery shipments to its Billings facility.
The Idaho Transportation Department had approved permits to allow huge coke drums to be hauled along a 175-mile route of U.S. Highway 12 in northern Idaho — part of a circuitous, 700-mile journey from the port of Lewiston, Idaho, to the Billings refinery.
Another look
But after opponents of the shipments sued, 2nd District Judge John Bradbury last week revoked the permits and ordered the agency to take another look at them. The opponents said that state transportation officials did not adequately consider harmful effects the shipping would have on tourism, public safety and the environment. The judge agreed.
ConocoPhillips has asked for an expedited hearing on its appeal. Such appeals usually take six months or more before Idaho justices hear the case. But further delays could threaten the planned upgrades and needed repairs at the Billings refinery and cost millions, company officials say. The Idaho Department of Transportation stands by its plan, and defends the 700-page document that governs the project.
The drums were made in Japan and shipped across the Pacific Ocean to Portland, Ore. Then they were put on barges that moved them up the Columbia and Snake rivers to Lewiston. They arrived in mid-May and are in storage at $4,500 a month.
Each drum comes in two pieces, requiring two trucks to each move a 300-ton, very wide load. The 35-mph journey will take about three weeks, traveling from Lewiston, over Lolo Pass to Garrison and then to Helena on U.S. 12,avoiding interstate overpasses all the way. Then on to Harlowton, Lewistown, north on 191 and then south to Grass Range and Roundup on Highway 19 and U.S. 87. From Roundup, the trucks go west on U.S. 12 to Highway 3 and down to Billings.
Expensive upgrade
The steel cylinders will replace two older drums in the coker unit at the refinery on Billings’ South Side. The project to upgrade the coker, which processes heavier crude oil into products like diesel fuel and gasoline, costs around $50 million.
A protracted court delay could shelve the local refinery’s planned upgrades until next summer. That uncertainty would be costly in the short term and we hope the court will rule expeditiously and uphold the permits. State officials say the haulers, with their special tires and extra axles, will create less stress on roads than the many commercial and logging trucks that travel that highway.
If the revocation of the special permits is allowed to stand, it could derail ConocoPhillips’ best-laid plans and threaten another project to move 200 oversize shipments of oil equipment to Alberta’s tar sands across the region’s highways.
Tagged with: alberta, conocophillips, idaho, refinery, billings
