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Crow tribe seeks investors for power plant
The Crow tribe is stepping up its push to find investors to build a coal-fired power plant near Hardin.
The tribe recently received a $250,000 grant from the Department of Interior to update its marketing plan for the 250 to 500 megawatt power plant.
Gazette Staff
"Our No. 1 goal is to sell (power) in the state and then market it elsewhere," Mervin Eastman, chairman of the tribe’s oil and gas committee, said Monday.
In 1995, a consulting group completed a "market feasibility" study on the proposed Apsaalooke Power Plant and said the best spot would be the Dry Creek area near Hardin. The tribe already owns the land and there are power lines to the property.
The recent Interior department grant will be used to update the 1995 plan and help find investors for the project, according to Eastman.
Tribal officials are talking with several power cooperatives about purchasing electricity from the plant. Investors would benefit from tax breaks and other incentives while the tribe would be able to keep costs relatively low because it owns the coal, water and other resources in the area, Eastman said.
The end result, he said, would be power that’s competitively priced or cheaper, according to tribal officials.
"I think we can undersell almost anyone," Eastman said.
The plant, which would employ several hundred Crow members and non-Indians, is part of a larger economic development effort to take advantage of the tribe’s holdings of coal, natural gas, bentonite, timber and gravel, Eastman said.
Copyright © The Billings Gazette, a division of Lee Enterprises.
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