Wyoming
Coal Production In Wyoming’s Powder River Basin Falls 21%
With the unveiling last week of new federal environmental rules that could accelerate the phasing out of coal-fired power plants by the early 2030s, signs of trouble ahead may already be emerging on the horizon for Wyoming’s coal industry.
First quarter data released Monday by the Wyoming State Geological Survey (WSGS) show coal production has slipped nearly 21% from the first quarter of 2023 when the Cowboy State dug up more than 58 million tons of coal out of the coal-rich Powder River Basin (PRB).
In the first three months of 2024, more than 46 million tons of coal was mined, according to the state data, a drop of more than a fifth.
Total employment in PRB mines stood at 4,103 workers at the end of the 2024 first quarter, down 101 jobs from the same year-ago period.
“Production is really down this quarter,” said WSGS Energy Minerals Geologist Kelsey Kehoe. “I wasn’t expecting to see such a large drop.”
Kehoe could not immediately explain the collapse in coal production in Wyoming’s Powder River Basin, which supplies roughly 40% of the nation’s thermal coal for coal-fired generation stations.
“It’s one of the largest percentage drops I’ve ever seen,” said Kehoe of the more than six years she’s been with WSGS.
The only other comparable quarterly drop in coal production came shortly after the COVID-19 pandemic locked down workplaces throughout the world in early 2020, she said.
At that time, quarterly production hit a low of 45.2 million tons produced in the second quarter of 2020, down 20% from the first quarter of that year and one of the lowest-producing quarters in many years, according to the WSGS data.
The 2024 first quarter drop in coal production is attributable to long-term structural challenges.
These include a mild winter, high inventories of coal stockpiled at coal-fired power plants run by electric utilities, and historically low prices for natural gas that have displaced coal for burning at power plants, explained Travis Deti, executive director of the Wyoming Mining Association.
“Gas prices have been stubbornly low,” Deti said. “We’re in one of those periods. These things go in cycles, and we’ll weather through this.”
The collapse in production comes just as coal-fired power plants across the United States, including in Wyoming, could close permanently within the next decade as a result of federal environmental rules released April 25 that significantly reduce pollutants emitted into the air and toxic wastes dumped into streams.
Litigation Coming
Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon is threatening litigation to stop the federal government’s actions that he says could undermine the Cowboy State’s economy.
“The state will take legal action at an appropriate time,” said Michael Pearlman, a Gordon spokesman. “While that will likely be soon, I can’t provide a more detailed timeline.”
In Wyoming, the rules will hit many of the legacy coal-fired plants from Naughton and Bridger in the southwestern part of the state, to Dry Fork near Gillette and the Dave Johnston plant near Glenrock.
The rules represent a big economic hit to Wyoming’s Powder River Basin in the northeastern part of the state where more than 4,000 people are employed in the industry.
Just this month, the two largest coal operators in Wyoming have reported lower volumes coming out of the PRB.
St. Louis-based Arch Resources Inc. said April 25 that its 2024 first quarter performance fell short of expectations as thermal coal demands dipped from its PRB mines in northeastern Wyoming, with layoffs seen as a possibility.
Arch said that operations in the country’s largest coal producing region slipped into the red fiscally in the first quarter, principally due to competitive pressures from cheap natural gas and stockpiling of coal by utilities after a mild winter.
And St. Louis-based Peabody Coal Corp. said April 11 that it won’t hit financial guidance targets for its first quarter, partially in response to dismal coal production out of the PRB.
Peabody Coal expects to release first quarter results Thursday.
Peabody also cited lower coal shipments to coal-fired power plants on “unseasonably warm weather and continued low natural gas prices.”
Peabody said Thursday that coal volume fell to 18.7 million tons in the 2024 first quarter versus the 21 million tons that it forecast. A year ago, Peabody mined 21.9 million tons in its first quarter.
The coal mined in the first three months of 2024 is the lowest volume in Peabody’s first quarter since 2014.
Pat Maio can be reached at pat@cowboystatedaily.com.
Wyoming
Casper veteran David Giralt joins race for Wyoming U.S. House seat
Wyoming
Rivalries and Playoff Positioning Highlight Week 11 Wyoming Girls Basketball Slate
It’s Week 11 in the 2026 Wyoming prep girls’ basketball season. That means it’s the end of the regular season. 3A and 4A schools have their final game or games to determine seeding before the regional tournament, or if a team is locked into a position, one last chance to fine-tune before the postseason. Games are spread across four days.
WYOPREPS WEEK 11 GIRLS BASKETBALL SCHEDULE 2026
Every game on the slate is a conference matchup. Several rivalry contests are part of this week’s schedule, such as East against Central, Cody at Powell, Lyman hosting Mountain View, and Rock Springs at Green River, just to name a few. Here is the Week 11 schedule of varsity games WyoPreps has. All schedules are subject to change. If you see a game missing, please email david@wyopreps.com.
CLASS 4A
Final Score: Laramie 68 Cheyenne South 27 (conference game)
CLASS 3A
Final Score: Lyman 40 Mountain View 26 (conference game)
CLASS 4A
Final Score: Evanston 41 Riverton 39 (conference game)
Final Score: Natrona County 42 Kelly Walsh 38 (conference game) – Peach Basket Classic
Final Score: #4 Thunder Basin 64 Campbell County 32 (conference game)
CLASS 3A
Final Score: #1 Cody 77 Worland 33 (conference game) – 5 different Fillies with a 3, and Hays led the way with 34 points.
Final Score: #2 Lander 49 Lyman 34 (conference game)
Final Score: #4 Wheatland 51 Douglas 40 (conference game)
Final Score: #5 Powell 48 Lovell 42 (conference game)
Final Score: Burns 56 Torrington 43 (conference game)
Final Score: Glenrock 78 Newcastle 30 (conference game)
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CLASS 4A
Rock Springs at #2 Green River, 5:30 p.m. (conference game)
#4 Thunder Basin at #5 Sheridan, 5:30 p.m. (conference game)
#1 Cheyenne East at #3 Cheyenne Central, 6 p.m. (conference game)
Jackson at Star Valley, 6 p.m. (conference game)
CLASS 3A
#3 Pinedale at Mountain View, 4 p.m. (conference game)
#1 Cody at #5 Powell, 5:30 p.m. (conference game)
Buffalo at Glenrock, 5:30 p.m. (conference game)
CLASS 3A
Newcastle at Buffalo, 12:30 p.m. (conference game)
Glenrock at Rawlins, 3 p.m. (conference game)
Torrington at #4 Wheatland, 5:30 p.m. (conference game)
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Gallery Credit: David Settle, WyoPreps.com
Wyoming
Political storm in Wyoming as far-right activist caught handing checks to lawmakers
Controversy has engulfed Wyoming’s state legislature after a conservative activist was photographed handing checks to Republican lawmakers on the state house floor, in an incident that has highlighted intra-conservative divisions and the role of money in the Cowboy state’s politics.
The political storm started on 9 February, when Karlee Provenza, a Democratic lawmaker, took a photo showing Rebecca Bextel, a conservative activist and committeewoman for the Teton county Republican party, handing a check to Darin McCann, a Republican representative, on the legislative floor. Marlene Brady, another Republican representative, stands in the photo’s background, a similar piece of paper pinched between her fingers.
“You have a person from the richest county in the country coming down to Cheyenne to hand out checks on the house floor,” Provenza said. “I have never seen something so egregious.”
Questions around the checks were soon swirling, and answers weren’t forthcoming. When asked what Bextel gave to her, Brady told a reporter for local outlet WyoFile: “I can’t remember.”
Then Bextel herself addressed the incident. “I raised $400,000 in the last election cycle for conservative candidates, and I will be doubling that amount this year,” Bextel wrote on Facebook on 11 February. “There’s nothing wrong with delivering lawful campaign checks from Teton county donors when I am in Cheyenne.”
Since then, it has emerged that the checks came from Don Grasso, a wealthy Teton county donor, who told the Jackson Hole News and Guide that he wrote the checks for Bextel to deliver to 10 Freedom caucus-aligned politicians. Grasso said the checks were intended as campaign contributions, and were not tied to specific legislation. It is unclear how many checks were ultimately delivered, but two of four confirmed recipients include the speaker of the house, Chip Neiman, and John Bear, the former head of the Wyoming Freedom Caucus.
The Wyoming house has formed a legislative investigative committee, and the Laramie county sheriff’s office said they’d open a criminal investigation.
Bextel declined to answer questions from the Guardian. Brady, McCann and Bear did not respond to requests for comment.
Neiman said he considered the criticism a “wraparound smear campaign”. He said: “It never once crossed my mind that this was bribery.
“These legislators, myself included, are now guilty until we can prove that we’re innocent. How is that right in this country? Isn’t that a little bit backwards?”
The scandal has highlighted long-standing divisions in Wyoming’s Republican party, which in recent years has seen a growing divide between old school, more moderate conservatives and a harder-right Freedom Caucus.
Several former Republican lawmakers forcefully condemned their colleagues for accepting the checks, and a local Republican party branch called for the lawmakers’ resignations.
Ogden Driskill, a Wyoming Republican senator, told the Guardian he does not consider Bextel’s actions to be illegal, but that “just because you can do it doesn’t mean you should”.
Bextel has spent years pushing against housing mitigation fees in Wyoming, and Driskill noted that she distributed the house floor checks just days before a bill she had publicly supported was set to be heard. Bextel was registered as a member of the press, not as a lobbyist when she delivered the checks.
“Ethically and morally, it’s bankrupt to a massive degree,” Driskill said.
Neiman said that he and other legislators who received checks have supported similar bills in the past: “Bribery is paying somebody to do something they would not otherwise do.”
Nationally, the 2024 election cycle saw record-spending from the mega-wealthy, as well as dark money groups. Wyoming followed the trend, in a tense red-on-red primary season.
For those gearing up to campaign this year, Teton county, the richest in the US, and Bextel’s picturesque home turf, is an essential stop. Its extreme wealth gives it a foothold on the national level as well. Palantir chief executive Alex Karp and Donald Trump attended an annual Republican leadership fundraiser at Jackson Hole in 2024, and JD Vance attended the same one in 2025.
Bextel pulls dollars from Teton county into the Freedom Caucus side of Wyoming’s conservative split. She hosted no-press-allowed meet and greets earlier this year benefitting leading candidates for Wyoming’s governor and open US House seat.
In an interview with the Open Range Record, a media network she co-founded, Bextel said controversy around the checks was solely because she was making “even playing field” in Wyoming against the state’s more moderate Republicans, who she calls “George Soros” candidates. She said that she will be sure to keep raising money – just away from the legislative floor.
“I guess I’m gonna ask all the gentlemen and gentleladies to step outside the Capitol while I hand them a check,” Bextel said. “Let me be clear: I’m doubling down.”
But it’s not just wealthy local donors putting their weight behind the factions. Last election cycle, out of state groups spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on anonymous and often inaccurate mailers.
“These actors, especially from the far right, they like to push the bounds of the norms,” said Rosa Reyna Pugh, an organizing and advocacy consultant at Western States Center, an Oregon-based non-profit focused on democracy in the western United States. “They like to see what policies they can kind of push, and see where they can play a piece,” Reyna Pugh said.
While Neiman and Driskill fight politically, they do agree on one thing: summer will bring an expensive and brutal campaign season.
“You’re going to see more dark money than you’ve ever seen. We’ve done absolutely nothing to enforce it. Our secretary of state has not even made a slight attempt to deal with it,” Driskill said. “You’re going to see lots and lots of outside money and I think you’re seeing it on both sides.”
As national questions swirl around pay-to-play politics and profiteering in the Trump administration, Provenza wants better for the Cowboy State.
“We should not be aligning ourselves with how the federal government is conducting itself or how federal elections conduct themselves,” Provenza said. “We owe something far better and more honest to the people of Wyoming than that.”
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