What's going on with coal?

I haven't been doing a blow by blow on Wyoming coal for awhile.  It's just too depressing.  But a lot has been gong on.

That probably was emphasized by the two coal related stories in the Tribune this morning.

One headline proclaimed that the sale of the Blackjewell Eagle Butte and Belle Ayr mines is "dead". The sale had been approved by a bankruptcy court, but details have held up the sale and, according to the article, it is in danger of "floundering".  If it flounders, 500 laid off miners will not be returning to their jobs there, at least any time soon.

Secondly, Navajo Transitional Energy Company took out a full page ad about their purchase of three mines in Wyoming and Montana.  This is elaborated on in their recent press release, which in part states:

FARMINGTON, N.M. – Navajo Transitional Energy Company (NTEC) announces a significant acquisition and expansion of operations outside the Navajo Nation paving the way for others to follow in its conscientious energy development footsteps. 

NTEC has purchased substantially all the assets of Cloud Peak Energy, a public company that has recently filed for bankruptcy. The primary assets are three coal mines located in the Powder River Basin of Wyoming and Montana: Antelope, Spring Creek, and Cordero Rojo mines. The properties include surface and mineral rights to approximately 90,000 acres of land.  

One of the really interesting things about this is that the company is a native owned Navajo company that even as it expands notes that its focus is to provide jobs to the Navajo people. With its purchase of Cloud Peak's assets its taking a big step in coal, even as it also is indicating that its working on future energy resources.

The Navajo themselves are a very large Southwestern tribe with over 300,000 enrolled members, making it the second largest recognized Indian Tribe in the United States.  Their history is unique in some ways, one being that they, along with the Apache, are an Athabaskan speaking people whose ancestors migrated from the Canadian far north.  Native companies are not unique, but one of this size is unusual and its clearly in an expansion mode.