Utah’s largest coal mine is getting a fee discount worth up to $19 million, after the Bureau of Land Management authorized a royalty reduction in recognition of unspecified difficulties in extracting certain deposits of coal.
The BLM quietly granted the reduction on March 6, lowering the standard 8 percent royalty rate to 5 percent on 15.1 million tons of coal extracted from the Sufco Mine on the Wasatch Plateau, where Utah’s Sevier, Sanpete and Emery counties come together.
The BLM decision, which represents a substantial loss of revenue that would otherwise go to local governments, cited “significant and unique adverse geologic conditions,” but gave no further explanation of why such a generous reduction is warranted, presumably to protect propriety information submitted by the mine’s owner Bowie Resource Partners.