Third oil company eyes big loads

MISSOULA, Mont. (AP) - A third international oil company is looking at shipping huge loads of oil refinery equipment across Idaho and Montana along the same route that has already triggered a court battle.

Harvest Operations Corp. has met with Idaho officials about shipping 40 to 60 mammoth truckloads of equipment to the oil sands in Alberta, starting in June.

Harvest Operations, formerly Harvest Energy, is owned by Korea National Oil Corp., South Korea's state oil company.

Idaho Transportation Department spokesman Adam Rush said the agency met with company officials last month to discuss moving equipment on U.S. Highway 12.

"The transportation department and Harvest discussed load dimensions, bridges on U.S. 12, clearances, traffic control plans and the weight of shipments," Rush said. "The department meets routinely with haulers who have questions about permits."

Exxon Mobil Canada wants permission to ship 207 mega-loads of refinery equipment through the two states to the Kearl Oil Sands in Alberta.

ConocoPhillips wants to use the route to move four coke drums - huge pressure vessels that refineries use to make gasoline and coke - to its operations in Billings, Mont.

The Idaho Supreme Court is reviewing whether ConocoPhillips may use the route after a district court judge in August blocked shipments following a lawsuit by local residents along the route in Idaho.

Part of U.S. Highway 12 the oil companies want to use is designated as either the Northwest Passage Scenic Byway, the Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail or the Nez Perce National Historic Trail. For 100 miles it tightly borders the Lochsa and Clearwater, both federally designated Wild and Scenic rivers.

The Idaho Transportation Department's meeting with Harvest Operations was revealed following a public record's request for internal memos at the agency by Idaho-based Advocates for the West, a nonprofit legal firm representing the Idaho residents trying to stop the ConocoPhillips shipments.

Two of those residents are Borg Hendrickson and her husband, Linwood Laughy, who live near Kooskia.

"If we add up the number of megaload shipments ITD is now considering," they wrote in a statement, there could be "251-271 megaload shipments in approximately a single year."

Industrially strong but resource poor, South Korea imports almost all of its oil and gas and is moving to secure new sources of energy. Late in 2009 it bought Canada's Harvest Energy for $4 billion.

Renamed as Harvest Operations, the company announced last August it had bought the BlackGold Oilsands Project near Conklin, Alberta, from its parent company for $368 million.

Harvest has applied to increase production from 10,000 to 30,000 barrels of oil per day from the oil sands.