Despite explosive growth in U.S. coal exports in recent years, and mounting evidence that coal companies plan for even faster export growth, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) ignores exports when setting the selling price of publicly owned coal, according to a new report by Sightline Institute, produced in collaboration with WORC, Northern Plains Resource Council, Powder River Basin Resource Council, and WildEarth Guardians.

The report, “Unfair Market Value: By Ignoring Exports, BLM Underprices Federal Coal,” documents how coal companies operating in the Western United States have bought federally owned coal for pennies per ton, and are now reselling that coal on international markets for hundreds of times more than they bought it for. The report argues that BLM has consistently sold publicly owned coal to private coal companies at unreasonably low prices—thereby boosting profits for the coal industry while shortchanging the American public by millions of dollars per year.

• Read news release
• Read report
• Report: Changing Times for Coal Call for New Price Calculations (Montana), Public News Service
• Report: BLM Should Study Coal Export Markets (Wyoming), Public News Service

• WORC, Regional Organizer, Billings, Montana
• Northern Plains Resource Council & Montana League of Rural Voters, Canvass Coordinator, Billings, Montana
• Western Colorado Congress, Executive Director, Grand Junction, Colorado

Tell BLM Colorado State Director Ruth Welch and Secretary of Interior Sally Jewell to call a halt to further coal leasing until BLM’s badly broken coal management program can be repaired.

Federal coal giveaways like this one undercut the Obama Administration’s plan to reduce carbon pollution by regulating domestic power plants. It does not make sense to give coal away cheap so it can burn in foreign coal plants with even less pollution controls than would apply in the U.S.

Send a message on WORC's Action Page.

WORC announced today that Patrick Sweeney will transition from his position as the organization’s Executive Director on January 1, 2015 and phase out his employment at WORC over three years.

Sweeney will serve as a part-time senior advisor and focus on special projects, WORC’s civic engagement and voter participation programs and consulting on fundraising with the new executive director, the directors of the seven member organizations, and WORC’s development staff.

At its June Board meeting, WORC’s Board of Directors adopted a leadership transition plan that names John Smillie as the new Executive Director effective January 1, 2015. Smillie currently serves as WORC’s Campaign Director. A graduate of Stanford University, Smillie was an organizer and research coordinator for the Northern Plains from 1979 to 1986 and has been with WORC since 1986.

The Board promoted Kevin Williams to be Director of Organizing and Campaigns, also effective January 1, 2015. Williams earned a Master of Science Degree in Forest Resources from the University of Idaho. Williams joined the WORC staff in 1995 and is currently WORC’s Organizing Director. From 1984 to 1994, he served on the staff of the Western Colorado Congress, the last eight years as Staff Director. Western Colorado Congress, also one of WORC’s member groups, is an alliance for community action empowering people to protect and enhance their quality of life.

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• Principles of Community Organizing, a hands-on workshop covering the basics of leadership, fundraising, organizational development, and community organizing.
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Urge the Environmental Protection Agency to propose standards to cut methane emissions from oil and gas production — the second largest contributor to climate change.

Pound for pound, methane traps even more heat than carbon pollution, and the oil and gas industry is the nation’s biggest methane polluter.

Go to WORC's Action Page.

The Environmental Protection Agency has proposed to limit carbon pollution for the first time — an important step.

But the proposal needs to be stronger, and EPA must do more to reverse the course toward catastrophic climate change.

Urge EPA to move forward and strengthen its plan to cut carbon pollution.

A snapshot of residents defending their water, land, communities, and families from the harmful effects of booming oil drilling in the Bakken region of northwest North Dakota.