By Amanda Eggert, Montana Free Press

Congress has tucked an 800-acre expansion of an underground Montana coal mine into a budget reconciliation bill that cleared its first committee vote last week.

A two-page provision of the Natural Resources Committee’s bill authorizes Signal Peak Energy to access federally owned coal beneath central Montana’s Bull Mountains in accordance with an expansion plan the company submitted to the Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement in 2020.

The House Committee on Natural Resources voted in the early morning hours of May 7 to advance the nearly 100-page bill, with Republicans in favor and all Democrats except Rep. Adam Gray of California opposed. The bill is part of a larger budget reconciliation package that representatives are expected to debate in the coming weeks in the House Budget Committee and on the House floor.

In addition to directing the Interior Department to authorize an expansion of the Bull Mountains Mine, the bill allows for noncompetitive leases of federally owned fossil fuels, creates a pathway for companies to pay for expedited review — and guaranteed approval — of environmental impact statements, reduces royalty rates for coal, oil and gas, and reverses the Biden administration’s moratorium on new coal leasing in the Powder River Basin of southern Montana and northern Wyoming.  

According to committee members’ remarks on the bill during the nearly 12-hour hearing, the budget bill is either the “most extreme anti-environment bill in American history” and part of an agenda to “help Big Oil executives and billionaires profit any way they can,” or a sincere effort to address the country’s national debt by “delivering on the American people’s mandate to restore common sense to the federal government and stop the fiscal bleeding.” 

Committee Republicans estimated the bill will generate $18 billion in new revenue and savings. Democratic members of the committee argued that Republicans are forwarding a flawed fiscal argument and said the measure would increase the country’s deficit.

Environmentalists and agricultural groups opposed to coal mining’s effects on the state’s climate and water resources are critical of the bill’s Bull Mountains Mine provision, arguing that Signal Peak should be subject to the standard environmental review process outlined in the National Environmental Policy Act.

Shiloh Hernandez, an Earthjustice attorney representing environmental and climate groups in litigation about the Bull Mountains Mine, described the measure as a “giveaway to Signal Peak” that reflects both how “desperate” the company is for an expansion and its clout with Montana’s all-Republican federal delegation. (Montana Reps. Troy Downing and Ryan Zinke do not sit on the House Natural Resources Committee.)

“The Office of Surface Mining has been reversed twice now for not following the law in permitting the mine,” Hernandez told Montana Free Press May 14. “If the Trump administration was following the law, they wouldn’t have to create a legal exception for the mine, which is what the reconciliation bill is doing.”

Pat Thiele, a Roundup resident who serves as vice-chair of the Bull Mountain Land Alliance, argues that regulators should take a “hard look at the mine’s impacts.”

“Why is the U.S. Congress rushing through legislation that benefits a criminally convicted corporation while risking further damage and safety risks to our community?” Thiele wrote in an emailed statement to MTFP. “We’re tired of politicians spending all of their time bending over backwards for corporations while ignoring the concerns of everyday people like me and my neighbors simply trying to protect our land and water.”

In 2022, Signal Peak was fined $1 million for illegally dumping mine waste and violating safety standards. Executives with the company were separately convicted of drug and firearm violations, embezzlement, tax evasion and bank fraud. 

All four of Montana’s elected federal officials have supported efforts to expand the Bull Mountains Mine. In 2023, Sen. Steve Daines and Rep. Ryan Zinke wrote in a letter to then-Interior Secretary Deb Haaland that more than $100 million in revenues and royalties are riding on the expansion, and saying the U.S. government has a national security dog in the fight. 

The vast majority of coal pulled from beneath the Bull Mountains is bound for Asia via a shipping terminal in Canada. Signal Peak’s access to international markets appears to have made it less vulnerable to the demand decline that’s squeezing mines more reliant on domestic markets, according to Hernandez.

Judge blocks coal mine expansion sought by Signal Peak

In a Feb. 10 ruling, a Missoula judge found that the federal government’s environmental review of Signal Peak Energy’s proposal to expand the Bull Mountains Mine harbored “sufficiently serious” errors. The order effectively halts Signal Peak from mining federal coal until an environmental impact statement has been completed.

Signal Peak and the Montana Coal Council did not respond to MTFP’s requests for comment.

The budget bill comes amid Signal Peak’s frustration with the pace of the Interior Department’s production of a court-mandated environmental impact statement on the mine.

In 2023, a federal district court judge in Missoula ordered federal regulators to prepare an environmental impact statement to examine how a 7,100-acre expansion would impact climate-warming greenhouse gas emissions and local water supplies. Signal Peak has been impatient with the time the EIS is taking, telling the Yellowstone County Commission last year that the company will run out of coal to mine sometime this year if the expansion is further delayed, and that 262 jobs are at stake.

If the plan is approved, Signal Peak could garner access to an additional 175 million tons of coal, bolstering its position as one of the country’s largest underground coal mines.

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-Louisiana, has set a goal of passing the budget package out of his chamber by Memorial Day to comply with Trump’s request that Congress present him with a “big, beautiful bill” to sign by July 4.

This story was originally published by Montana Free Press at montanafreepress.org.