The Bureau of Land Management rejected the single bid it received for a major coal lease sale in Montana earlier this week and postponed a subsequent planned sale in Wyoming, an Interior Department spokesperson said.
The only bid in Monday’s sale in the Powder River Basin in Montana came from the Navajo Transitional Energy Co., which has been seeking to expand its Spring Creek Mine in Big Horn County. Interior approved an expansion of the mine earlier this year and had said the 1,262-acre lease area contained an estimated 167.5 million tons of recoverable coal.
The company offered $186,481.59 for the parcel, which Interior rejected because it did not “meet the requirements of the Mineral Leasing Act,” the spokesperson said.
The bid amounts to around $0.001 per ton of coal, far lower than previous lease sales in the region, which have attracted bids of more than $1 per ton.
