Coal companies pay 25¢ a ton for coal from public lands turn around and sell it for $35 a ton
The coal industry, for as much as it whines and frets and fake-cries about how oppressive the government is, gets a pretty sweet deal. We’ve noted before than companies pay 25 cents a ton for coal from public lands and then can turn around and sell it for $35 a ton. (We’ve also mentioned that they often sell that coal to China, meaning we’re subsidizing the world’s largest consumer of coal, but that’s a whole other issue.)
What makes this so much more galling is that the weepy coal companies might not even be paying for all of the coal they’re extracting. From The Hill:
Reuters said mining companies are underreporting the price of coal at mine sites — where royalties are assessed — then selling it to marketers that they often times own. Reuters said those intermediaries then ship the coal abroad, where they fetch higher prices.
http://thehill.com/blogs/e2-wire/e2-wire/281991-interior-to-investigate-coal-exports
http://grist.org/news/have-coal-companies-been-ripping-americans-off-even-more-than-we-already-knew/
= new reply since forum marked as read
like since the Mining Act of 187?. this has been going on forever, the actual market value may have changed over the years but the fact that they are ripping us off and have been all this time is not new. But I'm glad you brought it out in the open for more people to see and think about. I will say thank you here. 
It's too bad more people aren't enraged and engaged regarding this issue, it might have been changed by now. I never thought the figures we were seeing in the media were correct or even close. It's the same with oil, gas and timber... been that way for a long time. Oh, and did I mention public land grazing aka welfare ranching?
welfare so odiously pungent as to smell to high heaven in comparison to the Teapot Dome hullabaloo. 
