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Show i i By Ceil D. Andrus, Secretary of the Interior A national coal program we can rely on Coal, America's most abundant energy fuel, is a key ingredient in President Carter's formula for decreasing our dependence on costly and uncertain foreign petroleum. That makes the new Federal Coal Management Program which 1 recently approved a particularly timely and significant development. Coal's importance in the national energy picture becomes dramatically apparent from the recent upsurge of production in the West, where the Federal government own about 60 percent of the coal. The nation's total coal output now runs about 691 million tons a year. Of this, some 60 million tons comes from Federal lands. The program I recently unveiled has the potential to vastly increase the Federal share, and we have already targeted three major coal regions of the West where we can expect to produce early results. The Green River-Hams Fork region of Idaho, Wyoming and Colorado, now producing less than 26-million tons per year, would produce an additional 36 million tons yearly from several new mines. The Uinta-Southwestern Utah region which extends into western Colorado and currently produces 10.1 million tons, would produce 4.8 million additional ad-ditional tons each year. And the Powder River region of Montana and Wyoming would see its annual production rate almost doubled, from 37 million tons to 72 million tons. Additional leasing in these three regions can begin as early as 1981, and is expected to produce 1 .5 billion tons of new coal by 1987. That's just the beginning. In the long run. up to 200 billion tons of Federal coal reserves would be made available for leasing and production. Considering that each ton of coal produces roughly the energy equivalent of four barrels of oil. that will go a long way toward reducing our dependence on petroleum. a Hi '.l-.i.v hi.! ; . .il , .- This new program has been more than two years in the making, and we have gone all out to make it both environmentally en-vironmentally and legally acceptable. It requires that all potential coal lands first be studied to eliminate those unsuitable for coal mining, before the coal industry nominates tracts and before lease sales are conducted. This will reduce the risk of leasing un-minable un-minable coal. Logical as it sounds, it was not done in the past, and many leases were issued where mining was not feasible. So our new planning efforts ef-forts will have the added advantage of lowering the cost for both industry and the taxpayer by eliminating un-' un-' necessary and costly investigations of unminable areas. We will also provide for full participation par-ticipation by State and local governments, govern-ments, the minerals industry, environmental en-vironmental groups, ranchers and the public to help determine coal development policies, land use and land reclamation. This kind of "up-front" consultation will help to head off expensive ex-pensive and time-consuming court challenges we've experienced over the past several years. In short, we have designed the program in such a way as to obtain the degree of certainty and reliability we have already achieved in our oil and gas. leasing activities on the outer continental shelf. It is an ambitious program that will permit coal leasing to keep pace with the increased demand for coal that we know will occur in the 1980's and beyond. There is no "plop,plop--fizz,fizz" 1 medicine that I know of to cure our energy afflictions. Reducing our energy headaches will require a combination of ingredients. But while greater reliance on coal is not the only answer, it is, along with conservation and development of alternative energy sources, a significant part of the solution to America's future energy needs. ' |