by Kevin Killough
Wyoming’s congressional delegation is warning Interior Secretary Deb Haaland that a proposed amendment to the Resource Master Plan (RMP) for the Bureau of Land Management’s Buffalo field office would have disastrous consequences for the nation’s power grid and economy.
In their list On Tuesday, Rep. Harriet Hagamen and senators John Barrasso and Cynthia Lummis, both Republicans, explained that about 40% of all coal mined in the U.S. comes from Wyoming, with most of it in the Powder River Basin.
By banning coal leasing in this area, as the RMP amendment proposes, the United States would be cut off from 48 billion tons of coal. By comparison, the United States almost 516 million tons of coal were used in 2021.
“It is widely estimated that U.S. demand for electricity will increase in the coming decades. As it does, the letter reads, “it is imperative that our nation’s baseload of coal-fired electricity generation continues to be maintained.”
The letter also argued that the proposed amendment directly violates the multiple-use mandate that Congress granted the BLM in the Federal Land Policy and Management Act, which requires the BLM to manage public lands in a manner that “recognizes the nation’s need for domestic sources of minerals.”
“We call on you to withdraw this amendment,” the delegation said.
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Kevin Killough is a reporter for Just the News.
Photo “John Barrasso” by J.D. Vance, also known as J.D. Vance.
