Montana’s only underground coal mine will be allowed to increase its production nearly tenfold under emergency permitting procedures that bypass completion of a court-ordered environmental impact statement.
Under the accelerated plan green-lighted on June 6 by the Department of the Interior, Signal Peak Energy’s Bull Mountains coal mine can expand its annual production by nearly 50 million tons each of the next nine years, from 7 million–8 million tons to 22.8 million tons on federal lands and 34.5 million tons on adjacent private lands.
