Economics
Trump May Be Offering Coal Leases That No One Wants
- Lifting moratorium does nothing to help coal against cheap gas
- President seen signing executive order backing fossil fuels
Trump Signs Executive Order on Energy Independence
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President Donald Trump is expected to lift a moratorium on federal coal-mining leases Tuesday -- and it probably won’t do the industry much good until years after he’s left office.
That’s because U.S. coal companies including Peabody Energy Corp. won’t be looking to secure new reserves of the fossil fuel on federal land for years, especially as mining slows amid the sector’s worst downturn in generations. Production in Wyoming and Montana, where much of government coal is located, fell 18 percent in 2016 from the prior year. Coal’s share of U.S. power generation has plunged in the face of competition from cheap natural gas and renewables.