The Trump administration is seeking to boost coal production in the United States with a series of moves it says stand in stark contrast with the record of the Biden administration.
Earlier this week, the Trump administration approved a permit to increase coal mining by green-lighting Montana’s Rosebud Mine, which the Department of the Interior says “enables the recovery of approximately 33.75 million tons of federal coal and extends the mine’s operation through 2039.”
The move represents the fourth time in Trump’s second term that a coal mining permit has been granted or extended, including three new permits and one permit expansion.
Other sites opened up include Hurricane Creek Mining, in Tennessee, a project the administration says could produce up to 1.8 million tons of coal over the next 10 years and create 24 local jobs, and Navajo Transitional Energy Company in Montana, which enables the production of 39.9 million tons of federal coal and creation of 280 full-time jobs.
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The two other sites are in Montana in the form of the Spring Creek Mine, which supplies coal to states across the country in addition to Japan and South Korea, and Signal Peak Energy, which had its mining plan modification at the Bull Mountains coal mine approved by DOI in June.
Additionally, the DOI has ended the moratorium on coal leasing and reopened federal lands in states including Montana and Wyoming. In April, President Trump signed a proclamation granting relief from Biden-era coal regulations and signed an executive order backing the coal industry.
In one of the executive orders, the president instructed the National Energy Dominance Council’s head to “designate coal as a ‘mineral’ under Executive Order 14241,” a measure Trump signed in March that the White House said at the time would “boost American mineral production” and “streamline permitting.”
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Reclassifying coal as a mineral “opened up the door to speed up the permitting process” and “make more federal lands eligible for producing coal,” according to Price Futures Group senior market analyst and FOX Business contributor Phil Flynn.
“It also opens coal production and usage to a whole wide range of financial incentives, loans and subsidies that can support the production and exporting [of] U.S. coal,” he told FOX Business. “This is going to make coal more competitive with other fuel sources and will be a positive, because U.S. production of coal is cleaner than other countries and our use of coal is also cleaner and better for the environment as well.”
The administration is also touting 13 other projects that are currently at various stages in the permitting process including 8 Lease by Applications and 5 Lease Modification Applications.
The administration also says that under former President Biden, no new coal permits were granted and touted the president’s efforts in a statement to Fox News Digital.
“In just six months, President Trump has delivered an aggressive pro-coal agenda, reversing years of damage from Biden’s war on energy,” White House Principal Deputy Press Secretary Harrison Fields said.
“By slashing burdensome regulations and streamlining permits, he’s unleashing America’s beautiful, clean coal industry to meet our nation’s growing energy demands and deliver energy dominance here at home.”
U.S. production of coal amounted to 512.1 million short tons in 2024, according to preliminary data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA). That marked an over 11% decline from the prior year.
In its “Annual Coal Report” released in April, the EIA said the U.S. produced “less than half of the amount” of coal in 2023, compared to 2008.
“Rising mining costs, increasingly stringent environmental regulations, and competition from other sources of electric power generation have contributed to domestic coal production declines,” it said.
Fox News Digital’s Aislinn Murphy contributed to this report
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