The Obama
administration’s Bureau of Land Management auctioned a major tract of
Wyoming coal to Peabody Energy at a bargain-basement price of $1.10 per
ton today. The North Porcupine coal
tract
in the Powder River Basin went to the single bidder, Peabody subsidiary
BPU Western Resources, for $793,270,310.80 for
721 million tons, BLM representative Beverly
Gorny stated in a telephone interview. This sale, made under the
provisions of the Mineral Leasing Act of 1920, represents a massive
fossil-fuel
subsidy
based on the assumption that the use of the coal benefits the American
public. However, it is likely this coal is intended for the Asian
market, where sub-bituminous coal fetches a much higher price. The
non-competitive leasing program is under federal
investigation.
Moreover, the costs of the carbon pollution from mining and burning this coal were not taken into consideration. The 721 million short tons of sub-bituminous coal in the lease sale will generate approximately 1.1 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide when burned. With a modest estimated social cost of carbon at $65 per ton of CO2, the global-warming impacts to society of this lease sale exceed $70 billion—90 times the price paid for the lease. More than 27,000 people signed a Credo Action petition opposing the fire sale of Wyoming’s sub-prime carbon reserves.
The lease sale still has to be approved by the BLM post-sale panel, which rejected Peabody’s original offer of $0.90 a ton for the coal.