Utah oil-train builder hires Roger Stone as lobbyist
PolitocoPro Article Text:
BY Timothy Cama,Ian M. Stevenson | 01/15/2026 06:22 AM EST
E&E DAILY | Roger Stone, the longtime political adviser to President Donald Trump, is lobbying for a company hoping to expand oil-by-rail shipments out of Utah’s Uinta Basin.
Stone’s Drake Ventures disclosed the lobbying agreement in a congressional filing this week, saying only that Stone is lobbying for Uinta Basin Railway Holdings on “Railroad construction in Utah,” and has been since the beginning of December.
The proposed project would construct an 88-mile railway connecting Utah’s oil-rich Uinta Basin to national rail systems that would allow oil companies to transport crude oil to refineries in the Gulf.
The rural basin in northeast Utah and northwest Colorado is hemmed in by mountains and plateaus, requiring goods to be transported over two-lane roads that cross mountain passes.
Stone’s firm and the railway company did not respond to requests for comment on the filing.
Stone has been involved with conservative politics since the 1970s, and worked for Trump as early as the 1990s, including during his 2016 presidential campaign.
He was convicted in 2019 on charges including obstruction and witness tampering, for his activities around investigations into Russia’s interference with the 2016 election. Trump pardoned him in 2020.
Nonetheless, thanks to a 2019 law inspired by convicted former lobbyist Jack Abramoff, Stone had to disclose his convictions on his lobbying paperwork.
The proposed Utah railroad was the subject of a U.S. Supreme Court case last year.
In 2023, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled that environmental approvals of the project by the Surface Transportation Board, a federal agency, had failed to adequately address potential downstream environmental harms the railway would bring, including increased oil production and refining.
But in a unanimous ruling last May, the Supreme Court overturned that decision, deciding that the scope of environmental reviews need not be so broad.
