Biggest Federal Coal Lease Sale In 10 Years Brings One Bid - For 1/10th Cent Per Ton; Last Lease Sale Brought $1.10

A Navajo tribe-owned company bid $186,000 to lease 167 million tons of coal on federal lands in southeastern Montana on Monday in the biggest U.S. coal sale in more than a decade. The offer from the Navajo Transitional Energy Co. (NTEC) equates to one-tenth of a penny per ton, underscoring coal’s diminished value even as President Donald Trump pushes to mine and burn more of the heavily polluting fuel.

Federal officials did not immediately say if they would accept the offer. It was the only bid received. Two NTEC representatives attended the sale at the Bureau of Land Management local office in Billings, Montana. They declined to comment after it was over. At the last successful government lease sale in the region, a subsidiary of Peabody Energy paid $793 million, or $1.10 per ton, for 721 million tons of coal in Wyoming.

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The company bid $147 per acre for tracts of land totaling 1,262 acres (510 hectares). Another sale is planned Wednesday in central Wyoming, where the government is offering 440 million tons of coal next to NTEC’s Antelope Mine. The sales are going forward despite the government shutdown because the Trump administration did not furlough workers responsible for reviewing fossil fuel projects.

Many coal plants have been retired over the past two decades as utilities favored power from natural gas and renewable sources such as wind and solar energy. Selling new coal leases does not necessarily mean the tracts will be mined, said James Stock, a Harvard University economist and former member of the White House Council on Economic Advisers under President Barack Obama.

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https://apnews.com/article/trump-coal-sales-public-lands-montana-b2dbbdc81e7afbf24947b9a4b32fa417