The two-year battle between residents who live along U.S. Highway 12 and ExxonMobil’s mega-loads is formally over.

“We’re gratified that the industrialization of the beautiful Lochsa-Clearwater U.S. 12 corrdior has, for now, been stopped,” wrote Borg Hendrickson to Citydesk.  “And that the Imperial Oil/ExxonMobil threat to north-central Idaho’s outdoor recreation paradise and its single growing industry, tourism, has been removed.”

It was July 2010 when BW first told you about something called “mega-loads” – hundreds of giant rigs of oil equipment that ExxonMobil wanted to crawl across U.S. 12, before heading north to the oil-rich tar sands of Alberta, Canada.

Read more: Montana Closes Book on Plan to Roll Mega-Loads Across U.S. 12

(By George Prentice, Boise Weekly)

A scene from the documentary film Tipping Point: The Age of the Oil Sands

Idaho activists try to fire-up public over trafficking of tar-sands equipment

In the opening scenes of the documentary Tipping Point: The Age of the Oil Sands, a helicopter glides over Alberta’s Athabasca River.  Wending through a boreal forest the size of Greece, the river and its attendant countryside is as rugged and beautiful as any in the world.  Then, over a rise, gargantuan smokestacks suddenly spear the sky, lording over a landscape that can only be described as apocalyptic: the single largest source of CO2 emissions in North America.

These are the oil sands, a geological formation in which vast quantities of bitumen lie just below the earth’s crust — the largest proven reserves of oil in the world.

More than 1,000 miles to the south, cities like Moscow and Coeur d’Alene, along the I-90 and U.S. 95 corridors, are front and center in the development’s debate.

Read more: Megawoes on Megaloads

(By Zach Hagadone, Boise Weekly)

The foundation and underground services are in place at the first phase of the $8-billion Kearl Oil Sands project, seen in a recent aerial photo of the site north of Fort McMurray (Imperial Oil photo).

$11-billion plant on schedule to start up at year’s end

After months of delays, route changes, and extra work to disassemble huge oil sands modules sent from South Korea, the last loads are on the road to Imperial’s $10.9-billion Kearl project.

The final shipment of 33 modules left the Port of Lewiston, Idaho, last week on the way to Edmonton, where they will be reassembled and sent to Fort McMurray.

Meanwhile, about half of the 205 imported modules remain at the Port of Pasco, midway between Lewiston and the Port of Vancouver, Washington.  The Korean units represent about 20 percent of the modules needed for the vast Kearl project.  Almost all of the remainder were constructed in Edmonton-area yards, primarily in Nisku.

The Pasco modules are being disassembled and sent off in batches of two or three shipments twice a week, following a four-lane highway to Spokane, Washington, and Butte, Montana, then north to Alberta on a route that will take them east of Calgary.

“We’ve been moving multiple loads but on fewer nights,” said spokesman Pius Rolheiser.  Imperial has day park locations along the route.

Kearl is scheduled to start up at the end of this year with work now about 90 percent complete.

…Depending on weather and permits, all Pasco modules will be at Kearl by the summer.

…Imperial won’t be building an upgrader at Kearl but is using a patented paraffinic froth treatment system to produce a solids-free bitumen that will be blended with diluent and shipped by pipeline to North American refineries.

…A key feature of Imperial’s plan is to ship the Kearl diluted bitumen on the proposed 500,000 barrels-per-day TransCanada Keystone XL pipeline, which has become a hot political issue in the U.S.

Read more: Imperial Gets Last of Kearl on Road

(By Dave Cooper, Edmonton Journal)

Two Imperial Oil megaloads are expected to leave Tuesday from the Port of Lewiston.

The modules are the last two left at Idaho’s only seaport, according to an email from David Doeringsfeld, manager of the Port of Lewiston.

Two cranes used in handling the extra big shipments at the Port of Lewiston were dismantled last week, Doeringsfeld said in the email.

This could mean that Lewiston will no longer play a role in getting Korean-made components to an Imperial Oil processing plant at the Kearl Oil Sands in Alberta, Canada.

But that’s not entirely clear. Imperial Oil hasn’t confirmed it only has two megaloads left in Lewiston or disclosed what plans, if any, it has for Lewiston in the future.

As always, the Tribune will stay on the story. A photographer will join me at the Port of Lewiston Tuesday to watch the Imperial Oil megaloads depart.

I’ll continue to ask the Idaho Transportation Department and Port of Lewiston officials about any plans that may surface for other megaloads.

(By Elaine Williams, The Lewiston Tribune)

On Friday, February 24, Scott Parkin of Rising Tide North America (whom we hosted on our Climate Justice Forum show last week) published the article Tar Sands and Its Discontents in the online journal of “dispatches from the youth climate movement,” It’s Getting Hot in Here.  Scott opens his piece by asking readers, “Besides the story of the massive campaign to stop the Keystone XL pipeline, do you know about the other battles going on around the U.S. to stop the tar sands?”  He then relates Wild Idaho Rising Tide’s (WIRT) numerous rowdy protests, civil disobedience, citizen journalism, and megaload monitoring since last summer in our small town and reveals that, “Now only a few megaloads remain, and WIRT is organizing final actions to challenge Exxon’s supremacy.”  His article also references our Rising Tide colleagues’ work to stop tar sands development “in the red rocked canyons of southern Utah” (please see Utah Tar Sands) as well as Maine opposition to a proposed pipeline flow reversal, which could bring Canadian tar sands to the rocky coast, and unrest throughout the country, where “Big Oil has been modifying and building facilities solely for tar sands refining.”  Scott’s conclusion offers confirmation that WIRT’s actions stand at the forefront of long-overdue rebellions “of die-hard anti-tar sands fighters” against this industry’s “money, corrupt politicians, and institutional power and influence,” with “uprisings against powerful oil interests [not] that far off.”

Please read the rest at: Tar Sands and Its Discontents.

(From WIRT Newsletter)