Trump Coal Plan Includes Private Land Unlikely to be Mined (1)

Nearly 85% of the 13.1 million acres the Trump administration is opening to coal leasing is private or state-owned and unlikely to be mined anytime soon, except for land adjacent to existing coal mines, analysts say.

The Bureau of Land Management on Wednesday published a full list and series of maps showing where the acres opening for coal leasing are, and more details appeared in a Federal Register public inspection notice.

About 11,079,400 acres of the 13.1 million opening for coal leasing are known as “split-estate,” in which the surface of the land is private or owned by a local government, but the underground minerals are federally owned. Most of that land is in North Dakota and eastern Montana.

Of the federal land opened to coal leasing, 1,959,000 acres are managed by Interior Department agencies, and 65,000 acres are managed by the US Army Corps of Engineers. The majority of that land is in Montana and Wyoming, with 200,000 acres in New Mexico, 100,000 in Colorado, and 29,000 in Utah.

Some of the land is near Zion, Bryce Canyon, and Capitol Reef national parks in Utah, and Dinosaur National Monument in Colorado.

The plan to open the new land to coal leasing, announced Monday, comes as President Donald Trump moves to bolster the fossil fuels industry to help meet growing electricity needs. It’s not yet known whether Trump will be successful in his effort to revive the industry, which faced strong headwinds from prior administrations seeking to curb greenhouse gas emissions from the sector due to climate change.

Split-estate ownership “seems to make the opportunity less valuable” for coal companies in part because they would have to work with multiple private land owners and deal with different restrictions on development in order to build a mine, said Ian Lange, an economics professor at the Colorado School of Mines.

In Utah, “our coal operators now have more options to develop that coal to respond to increasing demands for low-cost, dispatchable, coal-fired electricity,” said Brian Somers, president of the Utah Mining Association.

The National Mining Association expects “significant interest” in “new leasing opportunities” amid soaring demand for electricity, said Conor Bernstein, the association’s vice president of communications.

“Where companies focus their leasing is going to be specific to the plans of each individual company,” he said.

Market Interest

Most coal company interest in that land will likely be near existing coal mines, but there is little market interest in developing new mines in regions where coal isn’t already being produced, Lange said.

Some companies may lease federal lands far from existing coal mines and then hold onto it, but it’s unlikely to be developed anytime soon, he said.

“They might lease something for the optionality for future production, but not necessarily with future plans,” Lange said.

Environmental groups and attorneys, which are likely to sue to halt coal mining expansion on federal lands, say they don’t expect the coal industry to gain much of a foothold despite Trump’s agenda to reignite domestic coal production.

“It would be extraordinary even in these times to see a coal mining company make the really significant investment needed to build a coal mine from scratch,” said Jenny Harbine, managing attorney at Earthjustice, a nonprofit law firm representing environmental interests.

She called the Trump administration’s plan to open 13 million acres to coal leasing little more than “bluster.”

“Ultimately, it’s a marketplace decision,” said John Leshy, a University of California College of the Law professor who served as Interior’s solicitor in the Clinton administration.

“I think it’s a safe bet that anyone interested in grabbing and trying to develop one of these leases—no matter how much subsidy and how little regulation the Administration promises—will surely calculate that they will have a fight on their hands if developing the lease poses threats to public lands that the American people hold dear,” he said.