By Nicole Pollack

August 19, 2022 - Back-to-back court rulings restricting new federal coal leasing this month have prompted anxiety among mining companies — and hope from climate advocates — that the reign of the Powder River Basin may be nearing its end.

U.S. District Judge Brian Morris of Montana on Aug. 4 ordered two Bureau of Land Management (BLM) offices to reevaluate the environmental impacts of coal mining before determining how much federal land should be eligible, and on Aug. 12, in a separate case, reinstated an Obama-era moratorium on most federal coal leasing, pending further environmental review.

A water truck prepares the way for coal trucks at the Eagle Butte Mine seen on May 18 in Gillette. Rulings in two court cases have rattled Wyoming's coal industry.
 

Photo: Lauren Miller, Star-Tribune

The Powder River Basin’s coal producers have already leased enough land to carry them through at least the next decade, according to Travis Deti, executive director of the Wyoming Mining Association. And the state’s trade group plans to appeal the second decision alongside the National Mining Association.

“We feel it’s an activist court, just looking to put coal off the table,” Deti said. “The BLM has a charge to administer the country’s mineral resources. And that does not include putting it off the table.”

For now, he said, strong demand for coal — which has been driven upward in recent months by the highest sustained natural gas prices in more than a decade — is keeping the mines busy. Many of those mines want to keep the trains coming long into the future. A few are currently considering expanding, though no new Powder River Basins lease applications were close to being approved when the decisions came down.

WildEarth Guardians, one of the groups involved in both recent leasing cases (along with many others), does not want that to happen.

It’s pushing for the U.S. to more rapidly curtail greenhouse gas emissions, including from coal-fired electricity, and hopes federal leaders will instead bar Powder River Basin coal operations from expanding beyond the leases they already hold.

“The Biden administration, the president himself — they made big commitments on climate and big commitments on reform of federal fossil fuel management,” said Jeremy Nichols, climate and energy program director for WildEarth Guardians. “If ever there was a place and a time to make that happen, the Powder River Basin is it. The time is now.”

WildEarth Guardians and other environmental organizations have repeatedly won challenges to federal environmental reviews of coal, oil and gas leasing, with judges often mandating climate-specific revisions and suspending leases in the meantime.

The frequent legal battles are a source of frustration for Wyoming’s fossil fuel companies. Many balk at pursuing or investing in lands that could become caught up in the courts, and which they may never be able to develop.

Environmental groups, meanwhile, plan to continue suing over federal leasing until they’re satisfied with the environmental considerations. They want the restrictions to be tighter from the start.

“I think, fundamentally, the courts are saying that the Interior Department and the BLM are sidestepping their environmental review obligations and giving short shrift to the climate impacts of federal coal leasing,” he said. “Judge Morris was not tolerating that, and made it very clear that the Interior Department had to do better.”