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The O. Zone: OilTrain vs. SunTrain, who you got? Supreme Court set to tip the scales
Union Pacific’s service map shows a very clear path for Utah oil trains through Salt Lake City, Ogden, Wyoming (Overland Route) and then Denver rather than right along the Colorado River.
Despite U.S. Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch recusing himself from the case, it seems likely SCOTUS will rule in some significant way to gut the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) in response to an Eagle County lawsuit blocking Utah oil trains along the Colorado River.
Gorsuch, distant cousin of Vail’s Gorsuch ski-retail family, pulled out of Tuesday’s Seven County Infrastructure Coalition (Utah) vs. Eagle County (Colorado) hearing and deliberation at least in part because of his ties to oil, newspaper, hotel (and former railroad) tycoon Phil Anschutz of Denver – a connection Real Vail first wrote about back in October (full disclosure, I have sold stories to his Gazette newspapers). A final ruling in the case is not expected until next year.
But Gorsuch recusing just means the conservative majority court will vote 5-3 instead of 6-3 against Eagle County, because the pro-business, pro-polluting justices are looking for any excuse to continue to put their finger on the scale for the fossil-fuel industry despite the by-now rather obvious and dire planet-warming impacts of continuing to pump carbon dioxide into our atmosphere.
If not this case, it would have simply been some other anti-NEPA vehicle, and this Trump-packed, extreme, right-leaning SCOTUS did not agree to hear this case just to offer up some benign clarification on the limits of NEPA.
At stake is the degree to which federal regulatory agencies must consider the off-site, downstream or distant environmental impacts of an infrastructure project such as the proposed 88-mile Uinta Basin Railway spur that would connect Utah’s northeastern oil fields with the main rail line near Price, where heated oil-tanker trains can then head east along the drought-dwindled Colorado River, under the Rockies at Winter Park, through the Moffat Tunnel, down into Denver and then southeast to the refinery-riddled Gulf Coast in Louisiana and Texas.
There is absolutely no scientifically credible way to deny that global heating due to manmade greenhouse gas emissions is causing the aridification leading to a crisis on the vital Colorado River, so adding more oil trains and their inevitable derailments, spills and wildfires to the mix seems foolhardy at best. But the fact is those trains are already rolling through Colorado and will continue to increase in number as long as oil prices stay above $50 a barrel or so.
And while many policymakers in Colorado are primarily motivated by their desire to keep Utah’s waxy crude in the ground, and therefore avoid the 1% increase in carbon pollution opponents predict, that ignores the fact that Colorado is one of the nation’s top oil producers itself, even as it acts to rapidly transition its power sector to renewable energy sources.
That dichotomy is mirrored in federal policy that’s seen unprecedented spending to shore up the endangered Colorado River while simultaneously promoting an industry that pushed the United States to set the all-time global oil-production record last year under the Biden administration, which apparently is not good enough for the incoming Trump administration.
In a market-drive economy, policymakers can steer industries with regulations, but commodity prices will rule the day. That’s why Trump will try to derail renewables in the power sector the next four years, but wind, solar and battery storage that’s cheaper than coal and natural gas will be hard to slow down. Similarly, global demand will set oil and natural gas prices, especially as wars disrupt those markets. And AI and crypto-driven server farms will demand more and more power from an-ever wider variety of energy sources.
Colorado Gov. Jared Polis is hesitant to pick winners in the oil-train dispute with our western neighbor, but he’s bullish on everything from geothermal to a SunTrain battery-rail proposal to continue to decarbonize Colorado’s power and transportation sectors. That project would boost a soon-to-be-mothballed coal-fired power plant in Pueblo by sending iron-phosphate battery rail cars to high-demand neighborhoods in Denver (it’s also worth noting Pueblo has a rail connection to the northwest in the out-of-service but not fully abandoned Tennessee Pass Line).
SunTrain is an end-around to the state and nation’s stalled transmission-line approval process, which, ironically, the SCOTUS decision on NEPA could speed up, because while environmentalists have effectively used NEPA lawsuits to slow or derail fossil fuel projects, those same tactics have also gummed up transmission projects for renewables. Arguably, by gutting NEPA, SCOTUS could be freeing up renewables as well.
Another possible end-around that receives very little publicity is Union Pacific’s Overland Route rail line through Ogden, Utah, where the tracks heads east through Wyoming. If SCOTUS overrides the federal regulatory process and establishes law outside of Congress, as I expect them to do, the Seven County coalition could still build their spur to Price, where it’s then mostly downhill and a fairly flat 168 miles to Ogden that totally avoids the Colorado River. That would be a nice, neighborly gesture, albeit one that adds time and costs and is up to Union Pacific.
Encouraging news to me, as first reported by Real Vail back on Nov. 13, is that the company that Union Pacific — which owns all of the rail lines in question — inked to a lease deal for local passenger service in Eagle County, Rio Grande Pacific, is no longer involved in the Uinta Basin Railway oil train project.
Also, a local coalition has formed to ask the state to at least study local passenger service on the Tennessee Pass Rail Line that’s been out of service but not abandoned since 1997. That would serve as a nice blocking action against future oil trains, but much more prohibitive are the 3% grades leading up to Ski Cooper and Tennessee Pass. By comparison, the Moffat Tunnel is 2% on both sides, and the Overland Route through Wyoming is flat and friendly to hydrocarbons.
Oil trains need to avoid mountain passes, crazy-ass curves and grades that require insane numbers of diesel locomotives. That’s not just a safety thing; it’s also a financial reality. One the Supreme Court, with its disdain for expert opinions and science, will no doubt ignore this week. If there is to be a regulatory tipping of the scales in favor of one form of energy over another, we’ve clearly reached a point where renewables ought to get the nod, and decarbonizing transportation should be the top priority.
Editor’s note: The O. Zone is a recurring opinion column by RealVail.com publisher David O. Williams. Please read how you can help support this site by considering a donation or signing up for news alerts … or both.
David O. Williams
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