FEDERALLY OWNED COAL, FEDERAL LANDS, AND COAL QUALITY IN THE WESTERN UNITED STATES
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.