EDITORIAL: Borrowing from China to ship Korean goods

Jan. 23--Manufacturing equipment in Japan and shipping it to ConocoPhillips' refinery at Billings, Mont., apparently is cheaper or more practical than building it in this country.

Ditto for building mining machinery in South Korea that ExxonMobil wants for its Kearl Oil Sands project in Alberta, Canada.

And the most convenient or least expensive way to transport those devices either to the Billings refinery or the Alberta oil sands site is to ship them up the Columbia and Snake rivers to the Port of Lewiston, then truck them up U.S. Highway 12.

The four ConocoPhillips shipments and 207 ExxonMobil loads are longer, wider, higher, heavier and more numerous than anything that's gone up that highway before.

So why does this project need a federal subsidy? And why is it that the last to know are the people most affected?

Last March and again earlier this month, the Tribune's Elaine Williams noted how the Port of Lewiston wanted the federal Treasury to help expand its facilities to accommodate megaload shipments.

"The money will be there and we'll find a way to get it there," promised Mike Hanna, a regional director for U.S. Sen. Jim Risch, R-Idaho.

Here's the track record:

In early 2008, the Port of Lewiston asked Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho and then-Sen. Larry Craig for a $540,000 earmark toward planning a dock expansion that ultimately would cost $2.9 million. The work would alleviate congestion at the port. The senators secured a $237,000 earmark.

In January-February 2009, the port sought a $1.8 million earmark, to be matched with $500,000 from the state of Idaho and the 2008 earmark. For the first time, the earmark request was tied directly to the megaloads. The application went to Crapo and Risch, who had just been elected. Then-Congressman Walt Minnick, D-Idaho, had refused to process any earmarks.

"As the most inland port on the West Coast, the port is in discussions with Exxon, Conoco, Shell and other companies for moving heavy lift cargo into the U.S. Midwest and to the Kearl Oil Sands in Alberta, Canada," the port's appropriations application reads.

Elsewhere in that document, the port advised Crapo and Risch that since July 2008, it had been working with "several U.S. and Canadian oil companies and logistics firms to ship oversized cargo" to the Kearl Oil Sands area as well as "with companies to transport oversized cargo into the U.S. Midwest for wind-powered generators and coal-fired electrical generation plants."

Crapo and Risch agreed to seek about $510,000, but the earmark request got bogged down in a budget fight.

Last year, the port sought $1.8 million for dock expansion to "accommodate break bulk cargo such as equipment modules for oil companies in Alberta, Canada; wind turbines to the Midwest and refinery equipment to Montana and Wyoming." Crapo and Risch got $850,000 attached to a budget bill, but the Senate deadlocked and failed to pass it.

All of which tells you the port has been telling the senators a lot more than it's been willing to share with the public. For instance, the port refuses to disclose how much it's charging ExxonMobil/Imperial Oil for accepting and storing its megaloads.

It also suggests -- as critics of the shipments contend -- that U.S. 12 is being contemplated as a megaload corridor beyond the ConocoPhillips and ExxonMobil projects.

Whatever the port is earning from this enterprise, it's apparently not enough.

It needs cash from Uncle Sam -- and Uncle Sam is in debt. So this money isn't necessarily coming from the American taxpayer. It's coming from banks. Possibly Chinese banks.

Do Crapo and Risch now propose to borrow funds from overseas to subsidize the shipment of Japanese and Korean manufactured equipment along an Idaho highway to job sites in other states and other countries? -- M.T.

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