HELENA – Montana has started issuing permits to an Exxon Mobil subsidiary to ship about 300 loads of oversized oil refinery equipment over interstates 90 and 15 to the northern border, a state transportation official said Wednesday.
The Montana Department of Transportation has so far issued permits for six loads to travel from the Idaho-Montana line to Alberta, Canada, Duane Williams of the agency’s motor carrier services division said.
“There very well could have been some of them entering today,” he said.
The modules are smaller versions of the so-called megaloads that Imperial Oil had proposed shipping across scenic two-lane highways in Idaho and Montana, but which a judge has temporarily blocked while he considered a legal challenge against the shipments.
That original route was met with fierce opposition from residents, conservation groups and local governments that said a proper study was not conducted on how the massive loads could impact the environment.
Imperial Oil officials have said the company applied to transport all of the modules along the interstate route rather than jeopardize plans to have the equipment in place by late 2012, but they still consider the original route along U.S. Highway 12 and Montana Highway 200 a viable route.
Each of the 300 loads traveling the interstate route will require individual permits, with some being hauled on conventional highway trailers and others on stouter, hydraulic trailers. The maximum size of one load will be 122 feet long, 25 feet wide, nearly 12 feet high and weigh 165,347 pounds.
Up to four conventional trailer loads at a time will be able to travel during the day, while up to two of the larger, lumbering hydraulic loads will travel at night to lessen traffic delays. The conventional trailer loads are expected to take two days to cross the state from the Idaho line to the Canadian border, while the larger loads are expected to take nearly six days.
Imperial already is cleared to transport the loads through Idaho up U.S. Highway 95 from Lewiston, where the first shipments arrived from the manufacturer in South Korea, to Interstate 90 and east into Montana. The company has moved about half of the 70 smaller loads now in Lewiston, with the other half in the works.
Williams said Montana transportation officials have received 30 or 40 comments on the new permits, with most commenters stating their opposition to the Alberta oil sands project and asking if the state had followed the Montana Environmental Protection Act in issuing the permits.
He said he does not yet know how or whether the agency will respond to those commenters.