Bureau Of Livestock And Mining Expects Top Dollar From Resuscitated WY Coal Sale. They're Not Going To Get It.

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“Even though the [Trump] administration is working hard to improve the market, it will take some time to dig out of the current hole,” CORE’s Thunder Basin Coal Co. Manager of Environmental Affairs Jamie Olson told U.S. Bureau of Land Management officials on Wednesday. “For that reason,” Olson said, “the fair-market value of coal in the Powder River Basin will remain soft for the next number of years.” The BLM should give “little weight” to past coal tract valuations, she added.

Olson was among about a dozen who attended the federal agency’s public meeting here — a step in the BLM’s expedited action on the West Antelope III coal lease-by-application project. The BLM resurrected the 10-year-old lease request in July after years of limbo due to a lack of interest on behalf of NTEC and a Biden-era leasing moratorium in the basin. The 440 million ton federal coal tract spans some 3,500 acres in Campbell and Converse counties. The intent of the meeting, according to the BLM, was to gather public comment regarding “the project’s fair-market value and maximum economic recovery.”

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Conservation groups, however, worry the BLM, under pressure from the Trump administration’s Unleashing American Energy and Reinvigorating America’s Beautiful Clean Coal Industry executive orders, might be tempted to undervalue the coal tract. Even if it is sold, they doubt whether a coal company can line up enough buyers for the estimated 20-25 years it would take to mine the coal. “The thing that is really frustrating is that the federal government is going out of its way to throw lifelines to the private coal industry,” Sierra Club Wyoming Chapter Climate and Energy Organizer Emma Jones told WyoFile.

Jones noted that even if a coal company offers a successful bid to buy the federal coal tract, Wyoming stands to earn less revenue from mining it. That’s because a provision in the One Big Beautiful Bill reduced the federal royalty rate for coal from 12.5% to 7% — an estimated $50 million annual revenue loss to Wyoming coffers. Wyoming lawmakers this year also reduced the state’s severance tax rate for surface-mined coal from 6.5% to 6% — an estimated revenue loss of about $10 million in 2026 and potentially lower each year afterward, if coal production continues to decline, according to state figures. “It makes it even less clear how this is actually going to be beneficial to Wyoming,” Jones said. “If the only way to keep this industry alive is for the federal government to basically give away coal for free, how does that make any sense?”

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https://wyofile.com/wyomings-massive-new-federal-coal-tract-not-likely-to-draw-high-bids/