Purchase of PRB Coal Mines Puts the Navajo Nation at Risk

It’s official: a federal bankruptcy judge has approved the sale of Cloud Peak Energy’s three Powder River Basin coal mines—Spring Creek in Montana, and the Antelope and Cordero Rojo coal mines in Wyoming—to a company called Navajo Transitional Energy Company (NTEC). A Cloud Peak attorney told the judge that NTEC probably won’t complete the purchase until the end of next week. But from the perspective of the bankruptcy court, the sale is all set to go forward. To those of us who have watched Cloud Peak’s multi-year descent into insolvency, NTEC’s purchase raises a key question: does the Navajo Nation face any financial risk from NTEC’s foray into the PRB? The answer is a clear yes: the Navajo Nation faces at least two kinds of financial risks from NTEC’s coal-fired spending spree. First, the Nation risks sub-par investment returns from NTEC’s high-risk gamble on coal. Second, and perhaps more importantly, the Navajo Nation could be forced to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to clean up NTEC’s mines...MORE