This bill would undo a recent decision by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to stop leasing federal coal in Wyoming's Buffalo Field Office. In November 2024, the BLM changed its management plan to make coal unavailable for future leasing after a court ruled that the agency needed to study how coal mining affects climate change. This bill would reverse that decision and require the BLM to go back to its old 2015 plan, which allowed coal leasing to continue.

In practical terms, this means coal companies would once again be able to bid on and lease federal land in the Buffalo Field Office area to extract coal. The BLM had decided to stop offering this coal for lease specifically because courts said they had to consider climate impacts when making decisions about federal resources. By passing this bill, Congress would be overriding that court decision and the BLM's response to it, essentially saying that coal leasing should resume in this Wyoming region regardless of climate concerns.

Providing for congressional disapproval under chapter 8 of title 5, United States Code, of the rule submitted by the Bureau of Land Management relating to "Buffalo Field Office Record of Decision and Approved Resource Management Plan Amendment".

Hageman, Harriet M.

This joint resolution nullifies the rule submitted by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) on November 20, 2024, which amended the 2015 resource management plan (RMP) for the Buffalo Field Office in Wyoming&nbsp;to make no federal coal available for future leasing. Thus, the joint resolution requires the&nbsp;BLM to follow the 2015 RMP as it was before it was amended in 2024 and make coal available for leasing.By way of background, the BLM developed the amendment to the&nbsp;plan in response to&nbsp;Western Organization of Resource Councils v. Bureau of Land Management.&nbsp;In that case, the court held that the BLM must evaluate the climate impacts of federal coal leasing in the Buffalo Field Office and include alternatives to limit or stop coal leasing in the evaluation in order to comply with the National Environmental Policy Act. After conducting the evaluation, the&nbsp;BLM amended the RMP and made&nbsp;BLM-managed coal resources in the Buffalo Field Office planning area unavailable for future leasing.