By Stan Holmes
"So. Remind me how the Oakland coal port controversy is connected to the satellite ports issue in Utah," asked Ann Harvey at a recent meeting of the Utah-West Coast team working to stop the proposed coal export terminal. Ann is a Bay Area activist with the No Coal In Oakland (NCIO) group and the Utah Clean Infrastructure Coalition (UCIC).
While the coal port / satellite ports link was referenced in articles for the Spring 2020 Utah Sierran, Salt Lake Tribune, and Deseret News, there's no harm in revisiting a few of the key points.
The NCIO website features a brief history of plans for an Oakland coal export terminal that began to emerge in 2011. Utah's coal industry took an early interest in the facility, which remains unbuilt and mired in controversy. California developer Phil Tagami had been struggling to find commodity traders whose business and investments would financially justify the Oakland Bulk and Oversized Terminal (OBOT) he promoted. Why not coal?
Though Tagami publicly claimed no interest in coal-related operations as late as December 2013, by early 2014 secret plans were afoot to push 8 million tons of Utah coal annually through Oakland to Japan. Utah's leading coal producer, Bowie Resource Partners (now Wolverine Fuels) had joined with Tagami to move the OBOT complex forward. Their plan was cloaked in secrecy until April 2015, when Sevier County's Richfield Reaper newspaper leaked the story and it was disclosed that Utah's Permanent Community Impact Fund Board (CIB) would commit $53 million in federal mineral royalties to the OBOT project.
Enter the Utah Legislature which, in 2016, covered the CIB's 'tail' by swapping $53 million in state sales tax revenue for the CIB-approved royalty money that should have gone to in-state community development. Thence was also created a "Throughput Infrastructure Fund" that pledges the $53 million toward an ocean export terminal, even though that amount would still leave the Bowie [Wolverine] - Tagami team short roughly $200 million to build the port...assuming Oakland City’s legal opposition can be overcome. Leading the pro-OBOT effort now is John Siegel --formerly of Bowie/Wolverine-- whose Insight Terminal Solutions (ITS) currently faces insolvency in a Kentucky bankruptcy court.
This is where the Oakland Coal Port - Utah Inland Port connection becomes more clear. When ITS was taken to bankruptcy court, one of the Utah coal county commissioners riding to Siegel's rescue was Garth "Tooter" Ogden. The Sevier County Commissioner, along with his counterparts in Sanpete, Emery, and Carbon counties, offered Siegel a $20 million advance on the $53 million throughput fund in order to bail ITS out of bankruptcy. Commissioner Ogden also wears a black coal hat sitting on the boards of the Seven County Infrastructure Coalition (SCIC), the CIB and --not least-- the Utah Inland Port Authority (UIPA). In addition to voting for all fossil fuel funding requests put to the SCIC, Tooter Ogden is in charge of tracking UIPA developments affecting the Coalition and gives satellite port program updates at every SCIC meeting.
The Inland Port system has always had a fossil fuel component. A coal train passing through Salt Lake City appeared in an early online graphic posted by Envision Utah. Now, the focus is on moving extraction industry products through a network of satellite ports that would initially skirt the Wasatch Front. Leading the pack of satellite port contenders is Salina, in Sevier County. Salina is located near Wolverine's largest coal mine and could be the key transfer point for truck-to-rail coal exports, particularly if a proposed rail link to the main Union Pacific line is constructed. The SCIC recently awarded a $45,000 contract to study Salina's development as a satellite port hub.
Hot on the heels of the SCIC and Salina are eight other rural Utah counties that submitted satellite port applications --without public input-- to UIPA this summer. This information had to be pried from UIPA director Jack Hedge via a GRAMA request filed by the Salt Lake Tribune.
Causing new concerns to the environmental activist community, those applications reveal that Emery County is "working on the Oakland coal port to Japan" for Castle Valley Mining LLC which, like ITS, has been the subject of bankruptcy proceedings this year. Iron County's application seeks an intermodal rail facility to help Kane County export Alton Coal Company products "to a seaport." Pitching its satellite port bid, Carbon County would facilitate fossil fuel exports from Wolverine's Canyon Fuels coal subsidiary and Anadarko Petroleum. The Carbon and Emery documents were among those listing "None" under environmental impact mitigation plans.
Utah's fossil fuel industry, including natural gas producers, is pushing hard to get its climate change-causing products through West Coast terminals...in the US. or, if need be, through Mexico. But coal is the main driver for Utah's dirty energy exports, putting California's Bay Area in the cross hairs. Oakland is the chief target, with the City of Richmond also under fire from Wolverine Fuels and the Utah Legislature.
The bottom line: There is definitely a connection between the Oakland coal port controversy and the Utah Inland Port Authority's coal-driven satellite ports program.
Fortunately, the Sierra Club --nationally and through the Utah Chapter-- is part of the activist community seeking to halt Utah's fossil fuel exports, keep coal and other dirty fuels in the ground, and promote a clean energy, sustainable economic future for families and businesses in rural Utah.
Want to get involved with the Chapter and its allies? Contact Rebekah Ashley rebekah.ashley@sierraclub.org