Controversial Coal Company Plans to Produce Coal for Products, Not Electricity
By Heather Richards
February 25, 2017 - Wyoming’s newest coal company in the Powder River Basin plans to mine coal not for electricity, but as a product to be used in cars and airplanes.
Partnering with research facilities like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Western Research Center, Ramaco Carbon offers a different future for the Wyoming coal industry in its proposed facilities in Sheridan County, the company announced Tuesday in its first public statement outlining new plans for the mine.
Wyoming coal is “too valuable to burn,” said CEO Randall Atkins.
“When we originally started and submitted our permit, we were intending to do a typical coal to utility,” he said. “As we have gone through the process, we have evolved to a better model.”
Ramaco’s previously unknown plans for the future of the mine had led to some confusion locally about the feasibility of mining coal in the current thermal market. Last year, three of the largest coal mines that operate in the state went bankrupt due to debt burden and national overstock of coal.
But if successful in its bid to dig coal, the Brook Mine 8 miles northwest of Sheridan would divert coal from the thermal market for mine-to-mouth manufacturing and use in products like carbon fiber for the automotive industry.
The mine site, a crooked polygon of land north of Interstate 90 as it passes north of Sheridan to the Montana border, would hold the newest coal mine in decades for Wyoming and a research park that Atkins said could bring up to 3,000 jobs to the region in the next five years, including researchers and scientists as well as coal, plant and construction workers.
However, the company’s permit to mine coal in Wyoming has faced a lengthy fight over mine boundaries and right of ways with a local coal company. Ramaco has also been questioned by local landowners, who say the mine plan as submitted to state regulators would cause damage to nearby structures and likely impact local waterways.
Ramaco has won the cautious optimism of local political leaders who see the boon of new jobs and revenue.
But the controversy has not yet ended. A state council that hears contested environmental cases dismissed a request by locals for an informal conference with state regulators Wednesday where they intended to request stronger environmental assurances and further impact study from Ramaco and state regulators. Led by the landowners group, Powder River Basin Resource Council, more than a dozen residents of the small town of Ranchester who have property near the mine, or use the area for recreation, wrote to the DEQ with a list of concerns about safety.
Big Horn Coal, which produced thermal coal in the Sheridan area for decades before ending the last coal operations in the county in the mid-1980s, has fought Ramaco over permit boundaries and mineral rights. The company filed an official protest to Ramaco’s mine plan after the dismissed hearing Tuesday. The Resource Council added its objection Friday. The matter of the plan will go back before the Environmental Quality Council as a contested case.
Ramaco’s CEO said the process to perfect the mine plan is ongoing and that misgivings over sinkholes, water quality and public input have been addressed.
“I have quizzed our permit engineers as well as our lawyers and been completely assured that every comment they made has been either remediated or mitigated,” Atkins said. “So I think a lot of comments have been exhaustively dealt with.”
Ramaco first bought mineral rights in Sheridan County in 2011. At the time, the company’s long-term intention was to open a thermal coal mine that would, like other Powder River Basin mines, feed power plants that burn coal for electricity.