BLM’s coal leasing plan won’t cause the sky to fall

The federal Bureau of Land Management issued Wyoming a reality check last month and Gov. Mark Gordon’s reaction would put Chicken Little to shame. An “outraged” Gordon claimed the BLM’s decision was merely part of an “ongoing attack on Wyoming’s coal country and all who depend upon it,” and issued his usual threat to sue over “federal overreach.” Ignoring that BLM leadership hails from our neighboring Western states, he expressed his “profound disappointment that our nation’s highest executive leadership has chosen […] to grovel at the feet of coastal elites.” 

What grave threat caused such gubernatorial angst? Nothing more, really, than a land use plan that acknowledges the realities of coal market trends. BLM published a resource management plan with a “preferred alternative” that includes no future coal leasing in the Powder River Basin. Sounds bad, eh? But the reality tells a different story. Let’s step back from the political rhetoric and look at what BLM’s decision really means.

Since Clean Air Act amendments in 1990 moved the epicenter of federal coal mining to Wyoming, our state has enjoyed the huge benefits of jobs and revenues from mines that at their peak produced half of America’s coal and generated over 25% of America’s electricity. In 2008, almost 7,000 Wyoming miners produced 468 million tons of coal. But a lot has changed since those peak employment and production days. For many reasons, including primarily low natural gas prices, the bottom has fallen out of the market for Wyoming coal. 

Every big coal company in Wyoming has experienced bankruptcy in the last decade, fewer than 5,000 miners still have jobs, and production has been cut roughly in half from the top years to under 250 million tons in 2022. Although Wyoming still produces more coal than any other state, as more coal power plants are being retired and competing energy sources like natural gas and renewable energy are more affordable for utility customers, coal’s share of the electricity market continues to shrink even faster. Just this year, coal production is down 20% because natural gas prices stayed low during our warmer winter. 

No company has bought a federal coal lease in the last 12 years. Why would they? BLM’s records show a trend of lease applications being voluntarily withdrawn by the companies that originally wanted them. All the BLM plan does is recognize reality — why should the agency make coal available for leasing when no company is asking for a lease? There is enough federal coal under lease now to last through 2041 at today’s production rate, which continues to shrink. The companies know BLM’s decision doesn’t threaten their industry. This lack of concern about BLM’s realistic resource plan was obvious when, as WyoFile reported, not one coal mining company bothered to attend a Campbell County Commission meeting held to rally opposition to the BLM plan.

Public and political outrage is even more baffling when we look at what the recent resource management plan really means. It is just that — a plan. It’s what the agency intends to do in the future under the laws that guide its mission, given its best estimates of what markets and environmental conditions will be. If carbon capture, the Hail Mary dream of saving the coal industry, does succeed and coal is needed to economically power our electric grid into the future, the resource plan will certainly be amended. If new coal feedstock manufacturing requires more coal, the plan will be amended. The plan is not an eternal prohibition of coal mining, but a logical course of action given market and climate realities.

And yet, our political leaders seem determined to deny what has been obvious to most of us for years. Jobs and revenue from Big Coal will not support our state forever. It’s time to stop whistling past the graveyard and start embracing the future. Our politicians owe us not lawsuits, anger, accusations and despair, but a commonsense plan to deal with realities over which we have no control. BLM’s coal leasing plan should give us the impetus to create another even more valuable plan — one designed to transition into Wyoming’s inevitable economic future.