By Derf Johnson
Huge cracks in the landscape are caused by
Signal Peak’s underground mining practices.
Photos by Ellen Pfister.
Barrels upon barrels of ink have been spilled on news stories covering the criminal enterprise in the Bull Mountains known as Signal Peak Energy. The owners of the Bull Mountains coal mine, located in Musselshell and Yellowstone Counties in southeastern Montana, are aiming for it to be the largest underground coal mine in the U.S. The company’s history reads like a John Grisham novel. Signal Peak is currently on federal criminal probation for willfully lying to federal mine regulators about serious injuries to workers and illegally dumping mine waste. Signal Peak, its executives, and its owners also have an arm-length rap sheet of criminal activity and non-compliance with environmental and worker safety laws, chronicled recently in the New York Times: “A Faked Kidnapping and Cocaine: A Montana Mine’s Descent Into Chaos.”
The three equal owners of the mine include the Boich Companies, FirstEnergy of Ohio, and private commodities trading firm Gunvor. Gunvor, which is registered in Cyprus and headquartered in Switzerland, has been accused by the U.S. Department of Justice in assisting Vladmir Putin in hiding his fortune. Gunvor has also been accused of being involved in a Belarusian oil smuggling scheme; was ordered by Swiss authorities to pay close to $100 million for failing to prevent its employees from bribing officials in Cote d’Ivoire and the Republic of Congo; and was ordered this past April to pay a $660 million fine by the federal district court in New York for a bribery scheme in Ecuador.
FirstEnergy Corp. is currently on probation for what the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Ohio has called “likely the largest bribery and money-laundering scheme ever in the state of Ohio.” FirstEnergy admitted spending over $60 million to bribe legislators and energy regulators to roll back a clean energy law and subsidize its power plants, ultimately agreeing to pay a fine of $230 million. Two former FirstEnergy executives have been indicted and the former Speaker of the Ohio House is serving a 20-year jail term. Signal Peak’s third owner, Boich, provided the seed funding for one of the dark money organizations at the center of the Ohio scandal, though he has not been indicted.
Against this sordid backdrop, MEIC and our partners have been working to protect the water in the Bull Mountains and our climate by holding the company accountable for the serious damage it is causing. Our efforts ultimately have caused Sen. Steve Daines to introduce legislation to basically give a free pass to Signal Peak to continue destroying water resources, harming ranchers, causing land subsidence, and polluting our climate, without repercussions.
Shockingly, Sen. Daines has introduced Senate Bills 4431 and 4432, which are designed to reinstate a failed environmental impact statement associated with Signal Peak and to allow the mine to bypass normal environmental laws and protections. Apparently, Sen. Daines believes that if a coal mining corporation can’t comply with the law, they should just be exempted from compliance entirely. Sen. Daines also introduced Senate Bill 4444, a cynical bill that would transfer huge swaths of public lands and mineral rights in the Bull Mountains into the ownership of a private family. In exchange, the family would relinquish the mineral rights (but not the surface rights) of lands in Big Horn County to the federal government to be held in trust for the Crow Tribe. The bill is entitled the “Crow Revenue Act,” but the version released as of the time of this writing did not include any actual revenue opportunities for the Crow Tribe. While Sen. Daines’ press release said the Tribe would receive revenue from the Signal Peak Mine, the bill text as introduced does no such thing.
Instead of being a sycophant for the most corrupt company in Montana and perhaps the nation, Sen. Daines should instead focus on bringing economic opportunities to southeastern Montana through the clean energy transition. Clean energy is growing rapidly, and with the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, there are enormous opportunities for “energy communities,” such as Yellowstone and Musselshell Counties, to benefit from clean energy development. Sen. Daines should also assure that the Crow Tribe receives the funding it needs to fully engage in the energy transition and develop clean energy resources on its own land.
This article was published in the July 2024 issue of Down To Earth.
