Sightline is releasing a new report today—Unfair Market Value II: Coal Exports and the Value of Federal Coal—documenting massive exports of federally owned coal over the last decade. The US Bureau of Land Management sold private companies the right to mine this coal for a pittance—in some cases, for less than 20 cents per ton. And when Asian demand was red-hot, these companies made massive profits selling millions of tons of federal coal overseas. Nonetheless, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has essentially ignored export economics when setting the “fair market value” that it will accept for federal coal leases. Now that the Department of Interior has placed a three-year moratorium on new coal leases pending a thorough review of federal coal policies, BLM has an ideal opportunity for a thorough review of the economics of exports. And our report points to evidence that by ignoring exports, the BLM has been selling many federal coal leases at just a fraction of their true economic value.
Download the full report below:
Unfair Market Value II, Sightline Institute, June 2016
Care to comment? The report is also featured in this article.
Want to learn more? Read the first Unfair Market Value report here.
