This time it's brother William, the owner of Oxbow Mining, whose Elk Creek Mine in Colorado is seeking to add some Bureau of Land Management (our) lands to his operations.
Because there are rules about leases being competitive, Koch had to petition the BML and have them set up a bid session. The public and any other bidders get two weeks notice. The local CBS affiliate put out a statement, which helpfully specifies that
© Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)
Which is a handy way of insuring that hardly anyone notices what's going down, unless they turn to the original source of the information, the
BLM. See it below the curlicue.
BLM Offers Land in Elk Creek for Competitive Coal Lease (04-30-12)
MONTROSE, Colo.— The Bureau of Land Management in Colorado will host a competitive coal lease sale on May 15 for a Lease By Application filed by Oxbow Mining, LLC, for a 785.79-acre tract in the Elk Creek area in Gunnison County.
The BLM’s open, competitive leasing process awards the lease to the high bidder who successfully meets or exceeds the fair market value of the coal, which is determined by the BLM. The minimum bid for the tract is $100 per acre or fraction thereof. All leases are subject to an annual rental fee of $3 per acre in addition to an eight percent royalty payment for developed coal.
Oxbow currently operates the Elk Creek Mine, which is an underground longwall coal mine just north of the town of Somerset, Colorado. The 785.79-acre federal coal lease tract contains approximately 3.8 million tons of recoverable coal that will be bypassed if not leased
Coal mining has been conducted in the area for more than 100 years. The Elk Creek Mine has been in operation since 2002 and produces approximately 3.8 million tons of coal annually. The Oxbow coal mine employs between 250 and 335 miners and generates approximately $7.6 million in royalties, of that approximately 50 percent goes back to the state of Colorado.
Roughly, 90 percent of coal deposits occur on public lands in Colorado. Currently, there are nine producing coal mines (seven underground and two surface operations) encompassing 75,000 acres in the state. In FY 2011, coal energy production on BLM Colorado public lands directly contributed $884 million to the economy.
For more information about participating in the competitive coal lease sale contact Kurt Barton, BLM Colorado Land Law Examiner, at 303-239-3714, or kbarton@blm.gov.
The BLM manages more than 245 million acres of public land, the most of any Federal agency. This land, known as the National System of Public Lands, is primarily located in 12 Western states, including Alaska. The BLM also administers 700 million acres of sub-surface mineral estate throughout the nation. In Fiscal Year (FY) 2011, recreational and other activities on BLM-managed land contributed more than $130 billion to the U.S. economy and supported more than 600,000 American jobs. The Bureau is also one of a handful of agencies that collects more revenue than it spends. In FY 2012, nearly $5.7 billion will be generated on lands managed by the BLM, which operates on a $1.1 billion budget. The BLM's multiple-use mission is to sustain the health and productivity of the public lands for the use and enjoyment of present and future generations. The Bureau accomplishes this by managing such activities as outdoor recreation, livestock grazing, mineral development, and energy production, and by conserving natural, historical, cultural, and other resources on public lands.
--BLM--
Some highlights from the above.
Coal that's extracted from the ground, never to be replaced, is now called "developed coal," as if there were some material transformation or change.
The justification for this proposal to give away the coal for a modest fee is that "recoverable coal ... will be bypassed if not leased," implying that this is a once-in-a-lifetime chance that will never come again for something thought lost? Is that what "recoverable" now means? Since, later on in the announcement, the BML claims to have 700 million acres of "mineral estate," (is that the same kind of estate as that on which no taxes are to be paid?) 786 acres seems like a drop in the bucket. But, how extracting coal is going to comply with the mission to "sustain the ... productivity of the public lands" is not clear. Perhaps that's because referring to extracting coal as "production," not to be confused with the "coal energy production," which comes later, (so much production, so little time) is a little hard to swallow.
I still haven't gotten over bank accounts being referred to as "products."
Anyway, this project has been in the works for some time, so there are some other opinions out there.
A story in Real Aspen from last October provides a bit more information:
The U.S. Bureau of Land Management is taking public comments until Oct. 24 on Oxbow’s proposal to drill up to 43 exploratory holes and build nearly eight miles of new roads on public and private land over 13,873 acres of federally owned coal at Oak Mesa.
That's not in the lease.
Located about 20 miles from Oxbow’s existing Elk Creek Mine along the North Fork of the Gunnison River the proposed Oak Mesa Mine could recover up to 150 million tons of coal. Some area residents are leery of such a massive industrial undertaking in a largely agrarian area.
Weist says he’s obtained verbal consent from about 20 private landowners just to go ahead with the current Environmental Assessment (EA) work. He adds that only about 10 properties would actually see exploratory holes drilled, and only one hole would be drilled on federal land if and when a BLM permit is issued. Separate deals would have to be struck for actual mining.
There's that word "recover" again. Must be the only positive hold-over from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. (Just throwing that in for an historical hook).
But according to Desty Dyer, a BLM mining engineer, federal laws enacted in 1916 and 1920 allow the mineral owner – in this case the federal government – to extract the resource regardless of consent from the surface landowners.
Dyer said the BLM, or its agent Oxbow, must first seek permission to mine the coal. If that doesn’t work, a deal must be struck. And if that doesn’t work, the mineral owner can go ahead and mine the coal anyway.
“So it kind of leaves the surface owner stimulated to make a deal – a reasonable deal,” Dyer said, adding that NEPA and the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act (SMCRA) of 1977 have complicated matters somewhat.
I only add that to make the point that Congress has been facilitating mine owners suckling at the public teat for a long time--so long that free minerals from mother nature's cupboard is what they expect. But, like jealous siblings, they object to ordinary mortals getting a free lunch.