“Mr. President, it’s an honor to be here. Thank you to the secretaries who have breathed late life into an economy in Wyoming that has been there for a long time,” Gov. Mark Gordon said as he addressed President Donald Trump in the Oval Office Thursday, June 4. “Wyoming produces the cleanest, most beautiful, little sulfur coal.”
Within a day, the Governor moved from that Oval Office news conference to Kemmerer where he offered an update on his statewide program, called, “The Essentials: Protecting Wyoming’s Future.”
Noting the importance of strengthening Wyoming’s future, he told Kemmerer/Diamondville that the family that “grew up here, still want to live here” as he spoke of maintaining a strong economy with the ability to generate power. “We now have an administration that understands we need to generate power,” he said in Kemmerer.
In Washington Gov. Gordon offered a report noting the benefits of coal to the education experiences of the state.
“When a kid grows up in Wyoming, their education’s paid for, in large part, by the coal severance taxes, by the royalties that come from mining that coal that was shut down by the Democrats. When they have a chance to get a job, they can go look to the coal mine. And it’s not just digging coal the way we used to.”
He talked about the changes in the mining industry. “It’s high tech jobs. You know, at this point, we don’t mine coal the way we used to at all. It is technologically proficient.”
However, Wyoming’s Governor, just returning from a business trade mission to Asia, emphasized further opportunities.
“Today, Mr. President, I really want to talk to you a little bit about our recent trip to Japan and to Taiwan,” he said. “Both countries that were going to forgo coal. Now they realize that they need that reliable, dispatchable, secure source of energy.
He pointed to Wyoming coal as the source for that energy and asked to help in accessing a port for shipment. “To be able to open that Oakland port is absolutely essential for the lifeblood of our state and for our coal mines,” he emphasized. “It is something that we tried to do in your first administration, and we almost got there.”
He added, “We actually were prepared to go through that belt that we have on the West Coast with California, Oregon, and Washington, and finally enforce the commerce clause to allow states like New Mexico, Wyoming, and Utah, to have access to that Asian market.”
Commissioner Shumway
Lincoln County Commissioner Mel Shumway weighed in on the governor’s meeting with the president and the potential opportunities for Lincoln County. “It’s encouraging to see new opportunities for Wyoming coal coming out,” Commissioner Shumway told SVI. “It’s exciting to think of a coal port for overseas shipping for Wyoming coal. Any opportunity for Wyoming coal bodes well for our local coal industry.”
Commissioner Connelly
Commission Chairman Kent Connelly added, “The Coal Port is the big need we have and to be able to include our Power plants on the west side of the state,” he said. “We should be able to export Coal under the federal Commerce laws. This administration is trying to make this happen. Its timing is on target for future energy needs of this nation.”
