Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke on Wednesday lifted the Obama-era moratorium on federal coal leases as part of the president’s energy independence executive order signed Tuesday.
“Well, it’s certainly a signal that the war on coal is over and punitive regulation that was directed specifically against coal we are looking at that,” Zinke told reporters on a call. “The president has made it clear that such regulatory policies that had… targeted coal are over.”
Zinke also announced the creation of a panel of advisors to examine the efficacy of the federal leasing program and if it is being fair to taxpayers by charging industry enough.
The Obama administration had put the moratorium in place in order to assess leasing rates, and determine if the cost of climate change should be added in assessing lease rates for coal, which the industry said would drive up the cost of mining. Forty percent of the nation’s coal comes from mining on federal lands that Zinke’s agency oversees.
Zinke said it’s not necessary to impose a moratorium in order to assess whether the fees are equitable. The executive order directed the agency to “process coal applications … expeditiously” by keeping with the process in place prior to the Obama-era moratorium.
Zinke did concede that “[t]here has not been a rush in the last few years” of applicants applying for coal leases, even before the moratorium was in place. Some of the decline in leases has been due to market changes, but “some of it has been an uncertain regulatory environment,” he explained.
Some of it was also due to the coal industry itself “being under enormous pressure.” Zinke said there have been a few hundred coal companies that have gone bankrupt, and some of the larger ones filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy that managed to overcome market declines.
Ultimately, the resurgence in coal leases is “going to be market driven,” Zinke said. “And we don’t favor one energy resource over another, we just want to be fair.”
