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Friday, July 19, 2013
Groups to U.S. Interior Secretary: New Coal Leasing Portends More Exports, Fleeced Taxpayers, Climate Change
National, Regional, and Local Organizations Renew Call for Leasing Moratorium as Major Flaws Revealed in Federal Coal Management
Contact: Jeremy Nichols (303) 437-7663
Additional Contact:
Kelly Mitchell, Greenpeace Climate and Energy Campaigner, (818) 282-0168
Washington, D.C.—With mounting evidence that the Interior Department’s coal management program is lining the pockets of coal exporters while shortchanging the American public and the environment, groups today renewed their call for a moratorium on new federal coal leasing.
“The Interior Department is rushing to lease more federal coal when all indications are that it is not remotely in the public interest,” said Jeremy Nichols, WildEarth Guardians’ Climate and Energy Program Director. “We’re calling on the Interior Secretary today to restore integrity to the federal coal program to ensure that Americans are not being taken for a ride by the coal industry. This starts with instituting a moratorium on new coal leasing.”
In a letter to Interior Secretary, Sally Jewell, 10 conservation organizations, including national, regional, and local groups, appealed to the Department to fix the flaws in the federal coal management program and to stop selling new coal leases in the meantime.
The call comes as Interior late last week announced it intends to sell 150 million tons of coal from the Powder River Basin of northeastern Wyoming and southeastern Montana to Cloud Peak Energy to expand the company’s Cordero Rojo mine, the third largest in the U.S. Cloud Peak is a major coal producer in the Powder River Basin and a major coal exporter.
Interior is moving to sell the latest lease, called Maysdorf II North, even after the Department’s own Inspector General revealed a number of serious flaws in the federal coal management program. Among the key findings of the Inspector General is that the Bureau of Land Management—the Interior agency responsible for managing federal coal—is completely failing to take into account coal exports when selling federal leases.
Because exports are fetching a higher price than coal sold domestically, the Inspector General’s findings indicate federal leases are being sold at a bargain, enabling companies like Cloud Peak to reap windfall profits while denying the American public a fair return on their coal.
“All indications are that the Interior Department is subsidizing an export coal rush at the expense of taxpayers,” said Kelly Mitchell, Climate and Energy Campaigner with Greenpeace. “This is exactly the right time to put the brakes on new coal leasing and ensure the public is not being scammed.”
This practice of ignoring the higher value of coal exports was first reported in a 2012 Reuters news article, which prompted U.S. Senators Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) to raise alarms over the practice in a joint letter to the Interior Secretary.
The Inspector General’s report, which was released on June 11, 2013, confirmed that the “BLM does not fully account for export potential in developing the FMVs [fair market values].” Despite this, Interior is still moving to sell the Maysdorf II North coal lease.
Compounding this, the Inspector General found that that the Bureau of Land Management is inconsistently and inadequately ensuring that companies comply with federal coal management regulations, including environmental protection requirements.
“It is completely unreasonable for Interior to move forward with its latest leasing plans while the federal coal program is clearly in need of repair,” said Nichols. “Not only do these leasing plans threaten to deny us a fair return, they threaten to further erode our environmental safeguards.”
The organizations joining the letter include NRDC, the Western Organization of Resource Councils, Sierra Club, Powder River Basin Resource Council, Northern Plains Resource Council, Greenpeace, WildEarth Guardians, Coloradans for Fair Rates and Clean Energy, and Clean Energy Action. The letter echoes a request made by the groups in May to Secretary Jewell, a request that the Interior Secretary has yet to respond to.
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