Federally owned coal is a critical part of the energy supply of the United States. Coal produced from Federal leases tripled, from 12 percent of total U.S. production in 1976 to 35 percent in 1999. The primary reason for this increase is the demand for coal that is low in total sulfur content (1 percent or less) and ash yield (8 percent or less), and therefore generally compliant with air-emissions standards for coal-fired electric power plants. Large reserves of compliant coal are federally owned in the western States, where almost all of the Nation’s Federal coal is located.

The National Coal Resource Assessment (NCRA), recently completed by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), reports an estimated resource of 1,170 billion short tons of assessed coal in Wyoming, Montana, North Dakota, Colorado, Utah, and New Mexico. The sulfur contents and ash yields of this assessed coal range from a low of about 0.4 percent sulfur in the Powder River Basin, Wyoming and Montana, and 6 percent ash in the Danforth Hills, Colorado, to a maximum of about 0.9 percent sulfur in the Hanna and Carbon Basins, Wyoming, and 20 percent ash in the San Juan Basin, New Mexico and Colorado. About seventy-five percent (880 billion short tons) of this coal is federally owned and about thirty percent (348 billion short tons) is under land that is federally managed. However, USGS studies show that only a part of the assessed coal is available for mining and is likely to be economically recoverable.

Federally owned coal plays an important role in the U.S. economy. In 1999, almost one third of a billion dollars in royalties was generated from production of Federal coal. Half of that amount was dispersed to the producing States. Information from the NCRA, including resource estimates, and spatial, stratigraphic, and coal quality data, can be used by policymakers and planners to make decisions concerning Federal lands and Federal coal resource development.