PERSPECTIVES
The section entitled Perspectives is an Acrobat presentation
that summarizes the rationale for the coal assessment study in the Northern
Rocky Mountains and Great Plains region. The text and illustrations explain
the “why,” “how,” and “where” of the assessment, and demonstrate the benefits
to society.
Click here to begin.
OBJECTIVES
The objectives of the coal resource assessment are to:
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Compile the information needed and assess selected coal beds
and zones of the Fort Union Formation and its equivalent formations that
arepotentially minable in the next two or three decades.
-
Identify clean and compliant coal that meets standards of
the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for sulfur, ash, and trace elements
of environmental concern.
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Create a publicly available digital database of this coal
that can be rapidly accessed and analyzed to provide information critical
to decision-making by government, industry, and the public.
-
Produce widely available digital products accessible in a
variety of interpretive and interactive forms. (Please contact Romeo
M. Flores at rflores@usgs.gov for more information.)
STRATEGY
The high quality of coal in selected Fort Union and equivalent
coal beds and zones in the Northern Rocky Mountains and Great Plains region,
in general, and in the Powder River Basin, in particular, makes it an important
energy resource for continued development and expanded utilization within
current and future environmental constraints. Our strategy to investigate
and assess these important coal beds and zones is to create, manage, and
analyze digital databases from which derivative digital products can be
generated. Interpretive and interactive digital presentations and databases
are provided in this report for users to utilize the data and metadata.
Thus, this detailed investigation of these clean and compliant coal resources
provides new and needed information for coal availability and recoverability,
and for future mining development into the next century. The coal data
and resource estimates provided in this report are also needed on a basinwide
scale for potential coal-bed methane resource assessments.
BACKGROUND
The Fort Union Formation (Paleocene) and equivalent rocks
of Paleocene age in the Northern Rocky Mountains and Great Plains region
contain 18 coal beds and zones that yielded more than 38 percent (383 million
short tons) of the greater than 1 billion short tons of coal produced in
the United States in 1998.
-
Coal in the Fort Union Formation and equivalent rocks
is a valuable resource because the coal beds and zones within these stratigraphic
units are thick, and the coal is clean and compliant (low in ash, low in
sulfur, and relatively low in concentrations of trace elements of environmental
concern named in the Amendments to the 1990 Clean Air Act).
-
The coal beds and zones in the Fort Union and equivalent
rocks are targets for continued development and expanded utilization in
the next 20-30 years.
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The coal in the Fort Union and equivalent rocks is in demand
by as many as 144 electric power generation plants in 25 States of the
conterminous United States, and also in foreign countries.
-
Thus, Fort Union and equivalent coal will make an important
contribution to the economic and industrial growth of the Nation, and its
utilization deserves recognition and assessment.
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