The Biden-Harris administration recently announced a ban on new mining leases in a region responsible for roughly 40 percent of the country’s total coal.
Fox News reported that Todd D. Yeager, the Buffalo field manager for the Bureau of Land Management, confirmed that the Biden-Harris administration approved an amendment to the Resource Management Plan that will ban new federal coal leases and will make “48.12 billion short tons of coal unavailable for leasing consideration in order to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions as a proxy for climate change.”
According to Fox News, the new ban is expected to prevent new federal mining leases in the Powder River Basin of Wyoming, which is the nation’s top region of coal production, by 2041. The outlet noted that the ban will prevent new coal leases from being granted in an area of over 1.7 million acres in Montana and Wyoming.
Fox News reported that the Biden-Harris administration’s ban could be quickly reversed under President-elect Donald Trump’s second administration.
In a statement to Fox News, Karoline Leavitt, Trump’s nominee for press secretary, said, “Families have suffered under the past four years’ war on American energy, which prompted the worst inflation crisis in a generation. Voters re-elected President Trump by a resounding margin giving him a mandate to implement the promises he made on the campaign trail, including lowering energy costs for consumers.”
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Leavitt pledged that when the president-elect is inaugurated in January, he will “make America energy dominant again, protect our energy jobs, and bring down the cost of living for working families.”
Fox News reported that a recent Bureau of Land Management memo revealed that the Biden-Harris administration’s decision to block new coal leases is part of the administration’s effort to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. The memo claimed that the country’s energy market is “moving away from coal to lower priced natural gas and renewable energy sources.”
In a press release criticizing the administration’s new ban, Gov. Greg Gianforte (R-Mont.) said, “Once again, the Biden-Harris administration is ignoring states and crippling our energy supply.”
In a statement obtained by Fox News, Sen John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) claimed President Joe Biden “continues to punish Wyoming communities” despite receiving a “stunning rebuke” by the American people in the 2024 election. Barrasso added that he will work with Trump to “reverse” the administration’s new ban.
