Oakland Bulk & Oversized Terminal Called Envrionmentally Friendly By City of Oakland In 2012
ONN – The planned Insight Terminal Solutions and California Capital Investment Group with Managing Partner Phil Tagami-developed Oakland Bulk and Oversized Terminal has been the focus of a mainstream-media effort to tell what is a fake news. The fake news is that the OBOT is to be a polluting a coal terminal that Mr. Tagami came up with on his own. The truth, the real news, is that the OBOT is a bulk terminal with roots back to Oakland: Sharing The Vision in 1991, and that the City of Oakland has been a co-developer in, with the mutual objective of building a low-emissions facility that provides basic jobs.
In fact, according to a City of Oakland Official in 2012, the Oakland Bulk & Oversized Terminal will be a net help for Oakland’s environment.
Fred Blackwell, then-Oakland’s head of Economic Development and the early point-person for the Oakland Army Base Redevelopment Project, now CEO of the San Francisco Foundation, touted the Insight Terminal Solutions Oakland Bulk & Oversized Terminal (OBOT) as a “gift” to the “environmental community” in this video clip based on an earlier video-blog interview posted August 16th, 2012.
Mr. Blackwell, as well as Insight Terminal Solutions, have pointed to Oakland Developer Phil Tagami’s Oakland Global and the Oakland Bulk & Oversized Terminal within it as having an an environmental advantage because of its fast and close rail-to-ship design layout.
The format is projected to result in a reduction of thousands of truck movements per year through West Oakland. Trucks were found to be a leading cause of air pollution in Oakland.
This video has not been referred to at all in the mainstream media, yet it has been on Zennie62 on YouTube since 2012, and repeated here at Oakland News Now. For a media that prides itself on “journalism”, its curious that not one mainstream media organization in the San Francisco Bay Area has mentioned what’s on video. That’s one giant reason why the Insight Terminal Solutions OBOT developers hired Zennie62Media to tell the real story – it was being ignored by those same publications and TV news broadcasters!
One fact that also remains untold: the Oakland Bulk and Oversized Terminal is planned to use covered hopper cars, not open hopper cars. Covered hopper cars are in use and dramatically reduce bulk commodity emissions.
In addition to the use of covered hopper cars, the Oakland Global Rail Enterprise (OGRE) engine is an officially-rate low emissions design, specifically created to be used for the Oakland Bulk and Oversized Terminal.
As Blackwell explains, the City of Oakland knew OBOT was to handle minerals like coal and iron ore before it said it did not. But, there is more: it was the City of Oakland that identified coal as a commodity to be handled by the OBOT, not Phil Tagami, and thanks to the Tioga Group Study.
As reported here, at Oakland News Now before:
A report called the Tioga Report (because it was written by Stephen C. Nieman Principle with The Tioga Group, an American freight and logistics transportation consulting firm still active today) which was under contract with the City of Oakland in 2012 and hired specifically to evaluate the market potential for OBOT) that was provided to Zennie62Media by a source associated with content client Insight Terminal Solutions shows the following (Zennie62Media was hired by ITS to get out content on OBOT that was and has been ignored by the mainstream media):
1. That not only did the City of Oakland know the Insight Terminal Solutions Oakland Bulk and Oversized Terminal was to handle commodities including coal, the City of Oakland was directly involved in the pre-development planning for OBOT as far back as 2011.
The point in number one above ads to the Oakland News Now news of another document presented by a source and about the City of Oakland in the form of Elizabeth “Betsy” Lake signing off on a 2013 development agreement that specifically referred to coal as one of the commodities the OBOT was expected to handle.
Signs that the City of Oakland knew coal would be one of the many bulk commodities to be handled by the Oakland Bulk and Oversized Terminal are all over. The idea that even the Oakland City Council didn’t know that coal and iron ore were part of the plan is countered by this 2012 interview this vlogger conducted with then CEDA Director Fred Blackwell. Listen to the part where Mr. Blackwell says that iron ore, which is used with coal to make steel, is one of the commodities to be shipped:
It was not until after 2014, and when now U.S. Presidential Candidate and Billionaire Hedge Fund Investor Tom Steyer (who’s also a noted coal industry and private prison investor) started spending part of his fortune on altering the California political climate (including Oakland’s starting with Mayor Libby Schaaf) to go against traditional industry, that Oakland took the stance against the Insight Terminal Solutions CCIG OBOT that was presented by the City Attorney.
What follows is the text of the actual TIOGA study. Keep in mind that it was really designed to measure CCIG’s ability to build and run OBOT. The report set the bar for Phil Tagami, and in securing Insight Terminal Solutions, Tagami surpassed the bar – much to the surprise of the City of Oakland.
Never under-estimate Phil Tagami;The City of Oakland has done that, and on too many occasions – that in total disregard for the many ways Phil has helped Oakland. Here’s the Insight Terminal Solutions / Phil Tagami video:
And on the matter of coal itself, Insight Terminal Solutions CEO John Siegel explains why there’s no such thing as “dirty coal”:
The Tioga Report By Stephen C. Nieman of The Tioga Group For The City of Oakland
Here’s some excerpts from the actual Insight Terminal Solutions OBOT market potential report called the Tioga Report and written by Steve Nieman of The Tioga Group for the City of Oakland’s Community and Economic Development Agency (CEDA) and its project manager Pat Cashman. The entire report is a Scribd file embed here at Oakland News Now.
Here are the Tioga Report excerpts (a note that the paragraph breaks were installed by this author for better readability over the original document):
Background
The City of Oakland expects to become the owner, but not the operator, of new facilities that will occupy the space presently owned and operated by the Port of Oakland in the new, West Oakland Gateway development.
In particular, the facilities that are the topic of this report are what are presently known as Wharfs 6-1/2 and 7 plus the railroad right of way currently known as the Oakland Terminal Railroad (OTR) spur between Wharfs 6-1/2 and 7 and a) its rail connection with the Union Pacific Railroad (UPRR) and b) to/from a proposed new rail yard (not yet named) to be constructed by the Port of Oakland (Port) as part of the site of the former Oakland Army Terminal as recently acquired by the Port.
Five parties have created a development project for the space in West Oakland. The project is known as West Oakland Gateway with Oakland Global as the trade name for the activities on the site, and the project participants are known as the CCIG Team. They include California Capital and Investment Group (CCIG), the City of Oakland through its Community and Economic Development Agency (CEDA), the Port of Oakland (Port, also technically a City of Oakland department), ProLogis (formerly AMB), and Ports America (PA). Concurrent with this development in the West Gateway region of the City, the Port and PA are implementing a complimentary development at the Port.
Hence, the CCIG Team development (Oakland Global) and the Port’s development are interdependent including a proposed, new (unnamed) rail storage yard on the Port’s property. As for the portion being developed by the CCIG team, Oakland Global, the two key components that are the topic of this report are the facility at Wharf’s 6-1/2 and 7 to be known as Oakland Bulk and Oversize Terminal (OBOT) and the switching railroad to be known as Oakland Global Rail Enterprise (OGRE).
Apparently, CCIG’s business model for both OBOT and ORGE involves hiring management (as either employees or independent contractors) for both enterprises. Apparently it has already selected advisors and/or companies to provide the management of these services e.g. Stone, IRC, HDR, Kinder Morgan, etc.
Similarly, apparently CCIG and its advisors have made some inquiries and maybe some commitments to such manager/contractors. The services that might be provided by OBOT and OGRE could be import, export, or domestic. Domestic includes either to/from a) U.S. states and territories that are off-shore, accessible by a deep sea ocean carrier operating either barges or deep draft vessels, or b) states that are accessible by coastwise barge and vessel services.
The presumption here is that only international (export/import) cargos will be involved due to the OBOT facility having deep-draft, deep-sea capability. There will likely be opportunities for domestic services, too, but those are not contemplated here, at this time, because such is not the stated purpose of Oakland Global.
CEDA has asked The Tioga Group, Inc. (Tioga) to provide this report as its assessment of the business prospects for OBOT and OGRE, a market overview. The scope is to provide a very broad, but not deep analysis, for the purpose of isolating factors that are a threat to the success of OBOT and OGRE and which may require additional analysis. Tioga’s scope is to do this without creating new data or analyses but with the cooperation of the CCIG team as protected by a Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA).
Proof that Insight Terminal Solutions Oakland OBOT was to handle commodities, including coal, far before 2015
Read “Insight Terminal Solutions Bombshell: TIOGA Report Shows City Of Oakland Planned OBOT For Coal” for the rest of the real, long, true, story.
And there’s more here at that Oakland News Now post, but as you have learned, the City of Oakland was involved in the development of the Oakland Bulk and Oversized Terminal from the start, and that it was designed to be a bulk terminal, not a coal terminal, but coal was selected as a commodity to haul because of the size of the market, and that was done by the City of Oakland (not Rebecca Kaplan as one outlet wrongly reported) in 2011 – almost 10 years ago. That’s the truth; the City of Oakland Attorney’s claim that the City didn’t know about coal until 2015 is not true – a clear coverup from our perspective.
Stay tuned.