Micah Drew

(Daily Montanan) While the Trump administration and Montana’s elected officials continue pushing to expand the state’s coal industry, companies on the ground appear to have a waning appetite.

The federal government recently rejected a bid on a new coal lease offered for 167 million tons of coal from Montana’s Powder River Basin and postponed a sale in Wyoming scheduled for last week.

Navajo Transitional Energy Company was the only company to submit a bid for the lease in Montana for $186,000 for federal coal near the company’s Spring Creek Mine in Big Horn County. That works out to just a fraction of a penny per ton, and well below what the Bureau of Land Management estimates as the market value.

The last federal coal lease sale in the region went for $1.10 per ton, accordin

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