SANDPOINT - Failure to respond to a public information request is resulting in a lawsuit against the federal government.

Eric de Place of the Sightline Institute told those attending Wednesday's oil train forum that the institute will be filing suit against the Obama administration for its failure to respond to a U.S. Freedom of Information Act request.

"The lawsuit will be filed (today)," de Place said.

The suit will ask the president to respond not only to the FOIA, but also for broader information about the approvals of oil ban exemptions, de Place said after the meeting.

A sub-agency of the U.S. Department of Commerce, the Bureau of Industry Security is responsible for enforcing the decades-old crude oil ban. The agency last year began issuing oil ban exemptions for an ultra-light oil known as condensate, a largely unrefined crude oil, for export to Asian markets.

Sightline wanted to know why and, in conjunction with Oil Change International, a fossil fuel research, communication, and advocacy organization, filed an eight-page FOIA request in February. They received no substantive response.

De Place, a policy director for Sightline, a Seattle policy research organization, sees the limited exemptions as a crack in the door of crude oil exports that, if dropped completely, as he said the oil industry earnestly supports, would mean a massive increase in oil train traffic locally from oil fields in the east through the railroad bottleneck between Sandpoint and Spokane, with more delays as at-grade trains block local arterials.