The project started in one lane long before the current EIS
Oregon's Department of Energy timeline says NEXT filed its exemption request on November 9, 2020. That matters because it shows the project was already trying to solve the state siting question years before the current Draft EIS arrived in 2026.
When people look at the federal comment period now, they are not looking at the beginning of the story. They are looking at the latest lane in a long procedural chain.
A state siting exemption moved one big question early
ODOE says the Energy Facility Siting Council approved the exemption on May 27, 2022. That did not mean the project was fully cleared. It did mean one major state threshold had already been crossed while other permit fights were still unresolved.
This is part of why the proposal can feel both stuck and alive at the same time. One agency can move one piece forward while another agency is still rejecting or reworking another.
DEQ rejected earlier water-quality runs before the current one-year clock
DEQ says it denied earlier 401 applications in 2021 and 2022 without prejudice because the project lacked enough information for evaluation. In January 2024, NEXT resubmitted the 401 request and restarted the agency's one-year decision clock.
That is not the same thing as saying DEQ blessed the whole project from the start. The record shows repeated resets, then a later state water-quality decision on a narrower lane than the full federal EIS.
The federal application changed while the review kept going
The Corps says the applicant submitted a revised permit application on February 27, 2023 after the 2022 scoping period. The agency says that revision reduced the rail spur and some wetland impacts from the earlier design.
That helps explain why the file can feel slippery to people following it locally. The proposal did not stay frozen while agencies reviewed it. It evolved, and each evolution sent commenters back into a different document set.
Now the Corps is carrying the broadest lane yet
The Corps says the Draft EIS comment period ends April 20, 2026, with a Final EIS projected for spring 2026 and a Record of Decision in summer 2026. By this point the project is sitting inside the broadest public lane so far, where wetlands, transport, habitat, fisheries, tribes, and cumulative impacts are being argued together.
That is why the current round feels bigger than a normal permit dispute. The project survived earlier narrower lanes, and now the remaining fight is over whether the broader federal record can still justify moving it forward.
Why this fragmented timeline matters
People living near Port Westward keep saying the review feels piecemeal because, in practice, it has been. Oregon energy, Oregon water quality, NOAA consultation, and the Army Corps' permitting and EIS responsibilities have all handled different slices of the same refinery story.
I am not claiming that fragmentation proves corruption by itself. I am claiming something narrower and well-supported: one reason the project kept moving is that each setback landed in a different agency lane, and no single lane carried the whole controversy at once.
