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- Feb 28, 2011
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U.S. senators seek probe into royalties on coal exports
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...(Reuters) - Two influential U.S. senators have asked the Interior Department to examine whether coal companies are dodging hundreds of millions of dollars in royalty payments on lucrative sales to Asia, citing a Reuters investigation into the matter...
..."If any violations of the law have occurred, companies should be required to cure any gap in royalty payments and, if misconduct has occurred, civil penalties should be levied," reads the joint letter from Democratic Senator Ron Wyden, the incoming committee chairman, and the panel's leading Republican, Senator Lisa Murkowski...
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Powder River Basin coal, which supplies about 40 percent of U.S. demand, has typically gone to feed domestic power plants, and policymakers never considered Asian sales when they conceived royalty rules, Reuters reported in October.
The coal policies meant to keep domestic power cheap and abundant are now padding the bottom lines of companies like Arch Coal Inc, Peabody Energy Corp and Cloud Peak Energy Corp at the expense of taxpayers, Reuters reported last month.
The companies did not reply to a request for comment.
The senators cited Reuters reporting when they warned that coal miners may be selling to sister companies at artificially low prices to dodge royalty payouts.
Congress' investigative arm, the Government Accountability Office, has for months been examining the federal coal program. The Department of the Interior also has an open investigation.
"This is so obvious it shouldn't need to be said: Coal companies need to be paying taxpayers all of the money they are owed," Wyden said in a statement. "If regulators, or decades-old laws, are not doing enough to protect the public interest, our committee intends to find out, and to fix it."...
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