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Wednesday, August 21, 2013
Powder River Basin Coal Lease Sale Canceled
Coal Company Refuses to Submit Bid for its Own Lease
Contact: Jeremy Nichols (303) 437-7663
Cheyenne, WY—A 147 million ton coal lease sale in Wyoming today was canceled by the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management after the company seeking the lease failed to submit a bid.
“This is a victory for the climate and clean energy,“ Jeremy Nichols, WildEarth Guardians’ Climate and Energy Program Director. "Even coal companies seem to be acknowledging that more coal leasing is a losing endeavor.”
Interior’s Bureau of Land Management proposed to sell the Maysdorf II North coal lease today in response to a request by Cloud Peak Energy, the largest exporter of Powder River Basin coal. The Maysdorf II North lease would have expanded Cloud Peak’s Cordero Rojo strip mine, the third largest in the U.S., by 147 million tons.
When burned, the coal would release more than 250 million tons of carbon pollution.
At a scheduled lease sale today, the Bureau of Land Management was stunned that Cloud Peak did not submit a bid for its lease, prompting the Agency to cancel the sale.
The Powder River Basin of northeastern Wyoming and southeastern Montana is the largest coal producing region in the U.S., fueling more than 40% of the nation’s coal-fired power plants and increasingly fueling power plants overseas. Virtually all the coal in the region is federally owned and overseen by the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management.
The Interior has been overseeing a massive new coal leasing rush in the Powder River Basin. In the last five years, the Department has approved or proposed to approve more than seven billion tons of new coal. When burned, this coal stands to release more than 11 billion tons of carbon.
WildEarth Guardians and other groups have launched efforts to rally public support for a moratorium on new coal leasing in the Powder River Basin. In alerts released this week and last, Guardians and other groups mobilized their members to call on Interior Secretary Jewell to stop selling more coal. The alerts follow on the heels of a letter sent by a coalition of national, regional, and local groups to Jewell in mid-July calling for a moratorium on new coal leasing. The Secretary has yet to respond to this letter.
The calls to action comes on the heels of President Obama’s call for carbon reductions during a June 25, 2013 speech before Georgetown University students. This nationally significant speech called for a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. Less than two weeks after this speech, the Interior Department announced its plans to sell the Maysdorf II North coal lease.
The fact that Cloud Peak refused to submit a bid for the Maysdorf II North coal lease indicates that Interior’s push to lease more coal in the Powder River Basin is off base.
“More coal leasing portends more disaster for the climate,” said Nichols. “With the coal industry turning down opportunities to lease more coal in the Powder River Basin, the liability of more leasing is clearly becoming too great.”
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