In January, Secretary Sally Jewell announced a long-overdue comprehensive review of the US federal coal leasing program, after a decade of concerns from watchdog groups, states, and government agencies that American taxpayers were losing out on millions of dollars from federal coal leases. A litany of reports have found systematic undervaluation of leases, flawed estimation of fair market value, a lack of transparency and independent review, and a failure on the part of the Bureau of Land Management to consider the full economic impacts of leases in the federal coal leasing program.
After 30 years of no reforms to a broken system, the Department of the Interior finally put the federal coal leasing program on pause while they looked into ways to improve the system. This was a common-sense move: Just like you don’t leave the car running while you repair the engine, it only made sense to put the program on hold until the Department could figure out how to fix it.
The DOI’s plan may have been premature and the agency may have just been undercut – by another agency in the same Administration! This week, news became public that the Department of Justice plans to legally defend the continuation of some contested coal leases that the BLM issued in Wyoming. That’s right – the continuation.
Is this— as some environmental advocates have complained— an example of the Administration’s incomprehensible love for fossil fuels? Is this a simple example of the right hand not knowing what the left hand is doing? Doesn’t matter. The Administration better figure it out quickly or its representatives will face bitter opposition from the right and the left at upcoming listening sessions. And more importantly: its critical, taxpayer-friendly reforms won’t get off the ground.