An effort to block the shipment of oversized loads through Idaho and Montana is threatening an environmentally friendly upgrade at a Billings, Montana refinery. 

Here's what The Billings Gazette had to say in Tuesday's editorial- an odd step by a fairly reliable liberal editorial board:

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.

Meanwhile, the AP provided this update:

The Idaho Transportation Department joined an oil refiner in asking the state Supreme Court to overturn a judge's decision that's halted shipments of oversized equipment over U.S. Highway 12.