July 3, 2025 – FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Trump Administration Uses Bogus “Energy Emergency” to Rubberstamp Expansion of Utah Crude Oil Transport Facility – 7.3.25
Abbreviated environmental review will lead to a dramatic expansion of the Wildcat Loadout Facility
Contacts:
Grant Stevens, Communications Director, Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance (SUWA); (319) 427-0260; grant@suwa.org
Wendy Park, Center for Biological Diversity, (510) 844-7138, wpark@biologicaldiversity.org
Salt Lake City, UT – The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) announced today that it has completed an “accelerated environmental review process” and approved a significant expansion of the Wildcat Loadout Facility near Helper, UT. The facility is used to transfer Uinta Basin crude oil from tanker trucks to rail cars. The expansion is intended to push an additional 80,000 barrels of crude oil per day traveling on train tracks along the Colorado River, raising the risk of oil spills and other accidents.
The review, which provided no public input opportunities, was initiated in response to the “National Energy Emergency” declared by President Trump in January 2025. The Wildcat project proponent (Coal Energy Group 2, LLC) initially submitted an application to the BLM for the expansion in 2023. But BLM put the expansion on hold for two years because the applicant failed to provide the agency with the necessary information needed to evaluate it. The agency has offered no explanation for why this long-dormant project, one delayed by the proponent’s own actions, is suddenly an “emergency.”
“There is no energy emergency, plain and simple. Hidden behind a shroud of secrecy, the BLM has rushed through its approval of this massive oil shipping expansion project,” said Landon Newell, Staff Attorney for the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance (SUWA). “This thinly analyzed decision threatens the lifeblood of the American Southwest by authorizing the transport of more than one billion gallons annually of additional oil on railcars traveling alongside the Colorado River. Any derailment and oil spill would have a devastating impact on the Colorado River and the communities and ecosystems that rely upon it.”
“The Trump administration’s refusal to hear community concerns about oil spill risks is pure hubris. D.C. bureaucrats do not know better than local communities how this dangerous increase in oil trucking and rail traffic will affect their health and safety,” said Wendy Park at the Center for Biological Diversity. “This fast-tracked review breezed past vital protections for clean air, public safety and endangered species.”
Background
Coal Energy Group 2, LLC is seeking to reconfigure its current facility to add new infrastructure, including adding unloading areas, an oil tank farm, loading systems, and related facilities. This expansion will increase the site’s capacity to move oil from tanker trucks to rail car by more than one billion gallons annually.
Oil will be transported in trucks to the facility through the narrow Indian Canyon from the Uinta Basin, where it will be transloaded onto railcars at Wildcat. Those railcars will travel east along the Union Pacific line, where, for over a hundred miles, the tracks roughly parallel the Colorado River, the source of water for more than 40 million people across the West.
Additional Statements on the Proposed Expansion
In 2023, U.S. Senator Michael Bennet (D-CO) and Representative Joe Neguse (D-CO-2) called on BLM to prepare a full Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for the proposal expansion. On June 23, they released the following statement:
“The Bureau of Land Management’s decision to fast-track the Wildcat Loadout expansion—a project that would transport an additional 70,000 barrels of crude oil on train tracks along the Colorado River—using emergency procedures is profoundly flawed. These procedures give the agency just 14 days to complete an environmental review—with no opportunity for public input or administrative appeal—despite the project’s clear risks to Colorado.
There is no credible energy emergency to justify bypassing public involvement and environmental safeguards. The United States is currently producing more oil and gas than any country in the world. We strongly oppose BLM’s use of emergency authority in this case and urge Secretary Burgum to suspend this process and conduct a full Environmental Impact Statement that gives Coloradans a voice in decisions that directly affect them.”
On June 27, Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser wrote to the agency, saying:
“Because the proposed right-of-way expansion threatens the safety of Colorado’s land, air, and water, I urge BLM to undertake a more thorough environmental assessment that includes opportunities for public comment and other stakeholder involvement under the agency’s regular NEPA procedures.
…the proposal could dramatically increase the amount of oil transported along the River to up to 140,000 barrels of oil per day by 2026, compared to the current volume of 42,000 barrels per day These oil trains would run directly along sensitive and critical waterways and ecosystems, including the Colorado River—Colorado’s most critical water resource—and its headwaters as well as the Fraser River and Arkansas River…
The threat of accidents, derailments, and oil spills places these critical water sources at risk of contamination and poses other major health and safety risks to nearby communities including with respect to wildfires and explosive materials. …BLM is improperly and unnecessarily preventing the public from providing input about the project’s reasonably foreseeable effects, increasing the chance that important environmental impacts from the proposal will be overlooked and unmitigated, and subjecting Colorado communities to significant economic, environmental, and health and safety risks.”
###
The Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance (SUWA) is a nonprofit organization with members and supporters from around the country dedicated to protecting America’s redrock wilderness. From offices in Moab, Salt Lake City, and Washington, DC, our team of professionals defends the redrock, organizes support for America’s Red Rock Wilderness Act, and stewards a world-renowned landscape. Learn more at www.suwa.org.
The Center for Biological Diversity is a national, nonprofit conservation organization with more than 1.8 million members and online activists dedicated to the protection of endangered species and wild places.
