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Interior fast-tracks Utah coal leasing using GOP megabill
The Interior Department said Wednesday it had completed the first fast-tracked review of a federal coal lease in Utah under a provision in the GOP megabill.
The Bureau of Land Management issued a final environmental impact statement for the Skyline Mine project in central Utah, a project that's been mired in past legal challenges focused on its climate impacts.
BLM said the final EIS analyzes the proposed Little Eccles lease and the Flat Canyon lease modification that Canyon Fuel Co. submitted. The company has operated the Skyline Mine since 1981.
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'This is a critical step in unleashing the full economic potential of our coal resources and delivering reliable, affordable energy to American families,' Adam Suess, Interior's acting assistant secretary for lands and minerals management, said in a statement.
Interior said the approval marks the first expedited coal leasing action under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which includes language that allows the agency to accelerate federal coal leasing. The agency also said the move aligns with an executive order that Trump signed calling for 'Reinvigorating America's Beautiful Clean Coal Industry.'
The approval marks yet another project the Trump administration is advancing in the face of legal challenges while relying on newly introduced permitting procedures.
Interior said its decision fulfills obligations tied to a 2023 legal settlement between the agency and environmental groups that sued the agency in the U.S. District Court for the District of Utah for its approval of the project.
That settlement stemmedfrom a 2015 lawsuit brought by WildEarth Guardians and the Grand Canyon Trust. The groups in that case argued that the government violated the National Environmental Policy Act when issuing a lease to expand the Skyline Mine in the Manti-La Sal National Forest. The suit argued Interior relied on a previous 2002 environmental analysis that failed to account for climate damages of the mine's expansion.
The BLM in its final EIS for the project included an estimated social cost of carbon to comply with the settlement agreement but said that such estimates are 'misleading, strongly discouraged, and not required by law,' noting that the Trump administration has moved to scrap such requirements.
The BLM in a release said it plans to open a public comment period on the fair market value and maximum economic recovery of the federal coal contained in the proposed lease area. The agency is also planning an in-person public meeting about the final EIS.
