Bipartisan Pair Of Senators Calls For Investigation Into U.S. Taxpayer Losses From Coal Exports

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/01/04/1398201/bipartisan-pair-of-senators-calls-for-investigation-into-us-taxpayer-losses-from-coal-exports/

By Public Lands Team on Jan 4, 2013
by Jessica Goad

Senators Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) have called on Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar to investigate if U.S. taxpayers are getting shortchanged by companies mining coal from public lands and exporting the resource to other countries.

That’s according to a report from Reuters today.

Senator Wyden is Chairman of the Senate’s Energy and Natural Resources Committee, and Senator Murkowski is the ranking member.

Wyden and Murkowski said they were concerned that coal companies are not paying high enough royalties on coal mined on public lands. According to another Reuters article in December, companies are valuing coal at lower domestic prices rather than higher international prices so they “can dodge the larger royalty payout when mining federal land.”

If any violations of the law have occurred, companies should be required to cure any gap in royalty payments and, if misconduct has occurred, civil penalties should be levied,” reads Wyden and Murkowsi’s letter.

Approximately 43 percent of the coal produced in the U.S. comes from public lands managed by the government and owned by all Americans. Public lands are home to some of the richest coal deposits in the nation, mostly located in Wyoming and Montana’s Powder River Basin.

-----

a report published by financial analyst Tom Sanzillo in July found that the Interior Department has offered coal leases non-competitively in the Powder River Basin rather than putting them up for auction, thus costing taxpayers as much as $29 billion over the last three decades.