President Donald Trump on Thursday announced $75 million in funding for the developers of the heavily litigated coal-export terminal on Oakland’s waterfront, which he said would break ground this summer and is slated to be one of the largest coal shipment facilities on the West coast.
Oakland’s terminal is one of 13 coal plants and projects around the country that Trump is authorizing $700 million for through the Defense Production Act, the Cold-war era statute that gives the president broad powers to support domestic industries, Bloomberg first reported.
The terminal, located at the site of the former U.S. Army Base in West Oakland, has been tied up in nearly a decade of litigation, as environmentalists have fought to limit pollution from coal dust, and keep Oakland from contributing to the fossil fuel industry.
“By summer 2028, over 12 million tons of clean beautiful coal per year will be shipped to countries all around the world,” Trump said during a press conference announcing the funds.
In 2013, Oakland gave permission to developer Phil Tagami to build a shipping terminal on the city-owned land. He later signed a lease with a coal export company Insight Terminal Solutions which planned to ship coal to overseas markets.
Oakland responded by banning coal handling and storage across the city, including Tagami’s site. Tagami sued, and after multiple appeals, the courts decided that Oakland could not retroactively apply a ban on coal for a lease it had already approved.
Neither Tagami nor No Coal In Oakland, the group that has been fighting the project, immediately responded to requests for comment. Vikas Tandon, the investor behind Insight Terminal Solutions, also did not respond.
In his comments, Trump blamed the project’s delay on his predecessors. “Biden ended it, and then Barack Hussein Obama — have you heard of him, Barack Hussein Obama?” he said. “But that delay is now over and it’s going to be very productive.”
While the anti-coal activists may have exhausted their options in court, they are now turning to other strategies to block the terminal, or at least make it harder for the developers to move forward. In April, No Coal in Oakland called for the Bay Area Air District to impose a cap on the amount of coal that can go through the terminal, as well as strict limits on emissions related to the coal dust.
So far, the district has not taken action on the issue.
A key part of Trump’s energy agenda has been revitalizing the coal industry, which he has said is necessary to meet growing energy demands created by artificial intelligence. In the fall, the administration said it would open 13 million acres of federal land to coal mining and spend $625 million to expand coal plants.