Wyoming’s congressional delegation says it will use “every tool at our disposal, including legal action,” to keep a planned coal export terminal in Oakland, California, alive after Governor Gavin Newsom signed legislation last month that supporters say is designed to block the project before it can open.
The claims come from U.S. Sen. Cynthia Lummis and U.S. Rep. Harriet Hageman, both Wyoming Republicans, who laid out the dispute in a joint opinion piece published by Fox News.
The Oakland terminal would be the first coal export facility on the West Coast, giving Wyoming producers a direct route to international buyers. President Trump backed the project this summer with $75 million in funding through the Defense Production Act. According to Lummis and Hageman, California Democrats introduced the new bill immediately after Trump’s funding announcement, and the bill’s author said openly that the legislation was meant to stop coal shipments and oppose the president.
The lawmakers say the terminal had already cleared California’s environmental review process and survived years of litigation, all of it won by the project’s developers, after which the City of Oakland moved forward with development. More than $240 million in California taxpayer money has gone into the site, the lawmakers say, along with hundreds of millions more in private investment.
Lummis and Hageman argue the new law effectively rewrites the rules after the fact because state officials did not like the outcome of the approval process. They warn that a precedent allowing lawmakers to void a completed permit retroactively could threaten any project in California that runs against the political preferences of state leadership, whether it involves energy, manufacturing or housing.
High-Speed Rail Contrast
The op-ed also points to a second decision Newsom made the same day he signed the coal bill: he vetoed separate legislation that would have sped up hiring of auditors for California’s high-speed rail project.
According to the lawmakers, the state has spent $15 billion over 18 years on the rail project without laying a single mile of track. Voters were originally promised a Los Angeles-to-San Francisco line by 2020 at a cost of $33 billion. Current estimates put the cost between $126 billion and $231 billion, with completion not expected until 2040.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy revoked $4 billion in federal grants for the project last year. Newsom sued over that decision and lost, but according to the op-ed, he continues to defend the project’s spending.
Wyoming’s Position
Lummis and Hageman say Wyoming sits atop more than 600 years of coal reserves and argue that rising electricity demand across Asia means coal will be burned there regardless of California’s policies. They frame the question as one of whether that coal will come from American producers or from elsewhere, arguing that domestic coal exports support jobs in Wyoming while strengthening U.S. energy security abroad.
“Wyoming will not sit quietly while California politicians attempt to shut our energy producers out of global markets,” the lawmakers wrote, adding that the state intends to defend its coal industry through legal action if necessary.
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