If built, the Uinta Basin Railway could quintuple oil exports from northeastern Utah.
(Rick Bowmer | Associated Press) A train transports freight on a common carrier line near Price, Utah on Thursday, July 13, 2023. The U.S. Supreme Court issued a decision on a case involving the proposed Uinta Basin Railway.
The U.S. Supreme Court today cleared a major hurdle for the construction of a proposed oil railway in northeastern Utah. The decision could bring sweeping changes to how federal agencies consider environmental impacts.
The Uinta Basin Railway, if built, would connect the remote, oil-rich Uinta Basin to the national rail network — potentially quintupling oil production from the region, according to estimates from a 2021 environmental review.
The railroad would stretch 88 miles from the Uinta Basin to Helper, the location of terminals connecting to railroads that could send Utah’s oil to the Gulf Coast for refinement.
Though the case centered on the Uinta Basin Railway, the Supreme Court’s ruling may limit the scope of environmental reviews that federal agencies are legally required to conduct.
The justices heard oral arguments in December, after agreeing to hear the case last summer.
The Surface Transportation Board, the federal agency that regulates interstate rail transportation, approved the railway’s construction in 2021. But Eagle County, Colo., and the environmental nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity sued, arguing that the board did not fully analyze the railroad’s potential effects on communities on the Gulf Coast and along the Colorado River.
In 2023, the D.C. Circuit Court sided with the county and environmentalists, throwing out the federal agency’s approval. But the Seven County Infrastructure Coalition, which represents resource-rich counties in central and eastern Utah, appealed that decision to the nation’s highest court.
The Supreme Court reversed the lower court’s decision. The case will now be sent back to that court for further action.
The court’s opinion reads that the D.C. Circuit “incorrectly interpreted [the National Environmental Policy Act] to require the board to consider the environmental effects of upstream and downstream projects that are separate in time or place from the Uinta Basin Railway.”
“The ‘only role for a court’ is to confirm that the agency has addressed environmental consequences and feasible alternatives as to the relevant project,” reads the majority opinion by Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
Four conservative justices voted in support of Kavanaugh’s opinion. Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote a concurring opinion — agreeing with the result but not the reasoning — that the court’s other two liberal justices, Elena Kagan and Katanji Brown Jackson, supported. Justice Neil Gorsuch recused himself from the case in December due to potential financial conflicts of interest.
Paul Clement, a lawyer for Utah counties, argued in December that federal agencies should not have to consider environmental impacts that are “remote in time and space” and “within the jurisdiction of other agencies.” The railway’s opponents contended that federal law requires agencies to consider all foreseeable environmental impacts of potential projects.
Even with the high court’s decision, the Uinta Basin Railway will still require additional permitting and reviews before it can be built.
“There’s a lot of bureaucracy and things we have to go through to get those permits reinstated, but we are ready to do so,” said Keith Heaton, executive director of the Seven County Infrastructure Coalition, during an interim meeting of the Utah Legislature last week.
“If we get a favorable decision from the court,” he said, “and the other things we’ve got lined up happen, we hope to be constructing next year at this time.”
This is a developing story.
