United States: Coal: DOI Presses "Pause" On The "Black Sheep" Of Energy

The Department of the Interior ("Interior Department") has announced its launching of a comprehensive review of the federal coal program. The full press release issued today, "Secretary Jewell Launches Comprehensive Review of Federal Coal Program: Implements Pause on New Coal Leasing while Review is Underway; Announces Additional Transparency, Good Government Initiatives to Modernize Program," can be found here.

The review, which will examine federal coal leasing and the impacts of production, is said to take the form of a Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement ("PEIS") consistent with the National Environmental Policy Act ("NEPA"). According to the Fact Sheet: Modernizing the Federal Coal Program ("Fact Sheet"), the goal of the review is to identify and evaluate potential reforms to the federal coal program.

As part of the review and consistent with past practices, the Interior Department has also announced that it will institute a "pause" on issuing new coal leases while the review is underway.

The Fact Sheet reports that "[d]uring the pause, the BLM will not hold lease sales or process new lease applications for surface and underground coal."

The Interior Department press release reports that "[t]he pause does not apply to existing coal production activities" and that there will be "limited, commonsense exceptions to the pause."

In addition, Secretary Jewell announced reforms to improve the transparency and administration of the federal coal program, including "establishing a publicly available database to account for the carbon emitted from fossil fuels developed on public lands."

These actions are said to "build on existing efforts to modernize the federal coal program." An interim report will be released by the end of 2016 and the full review is expected to take approximately 3 years.

It is plain to see that many consider coal to be the "black sheep" of the energy industry.

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