The Interior Department is expediting a plan to increase oil-train traffic out of Utah’s Uinta Basin, as part of the Trump administration’s focus on boosting fossil fuel production.
A recent proposal would expand the Wildcat Loadout Facility, which transports oil from the Uinta Basin to rail lines that bring the fuel to refineries in the Gulf of Mexico. The move would allow the fossil fuel industry to increase the amount of oil transported out of the basin by tens of thousands of barrels per day.
Interior’s Bureau of Land Management plans to complete an environmental assessment of the proposal in just 14 days — even though such reviews under the National Environmental Policy Act usually take months or years.
Interior fast-tracked environmental reviews after President Donald Trump declared an energy “emergency,” directing its agencies to conduct environmental impact statements in 28 days and environmental assessments in 14 days without public comment. Experts have warned that meeting the new timelines while still complying with federal requirements could be next to impossible.
