On May 29^th the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) announced its proposed Resource Management Plan for the Buffalo Field office, which includes plans to make 10 billion tons of coal available for lease – spanning more than 100,000 acres in the Powder River Basin, that covers parts of Wyoming and Montana.

Through the plan, BLM expects to allow 28 new coal leases over the next 20 years, despite criticism from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) and others that BLM leasing practices fail to ensure a fair return to the government for publicly-owned coal, and must be reformed. Instead of addressing federal coal leasing’s shortcomings, BLM’s plan locks coal lease decisions made in 2001 into place.

The federal coal leasing program has consistently failed to obtain fair market value for taxpayers. Its controversial Lease By Application (LBA) system improperly skews the valuation of lease tracts, garners significantly reduced bids, and shrouds crucial information in secrecy. It fails to account for the growing export markets for federal coal, and seldom generates competitive bids, resulting in revenue losses from 1983 to date as high as almost $29 billion.

Before planning for any pending or new coal lease sales, BLM should enact reforms to make its sales competitive, properly account for export markets, and ensure that taxpayers receive a fair return for the extraction of publicly-owned coal.

To learn more about federal coal leasing, visit www.taxpayer.net/coal