1) The headline of the press release and the opening sentence place the Crow Tribe first, before mentioning Cloud Peak when Cloud Peak is the 49% investor and the Crow Tribe has no official part in the deal other than an “option to secure 5% from Cloud Peak Energy.”

2) SSA Marine’s Bob Watters puts the Crow Tribe first in his quote, calling the Crow Tribe a partner even though at this point, the Crow has nothing more than an “option” with Cloud Peak.
3) Cloud Peak can walk away from its investment at its discretion during the permitting phase and return its ownership interests to SSA Marine.

How convenient that Cloud Peak “has the discretion to exit its investment at its discretion.” That’s because (in my opinion), this so-called deal is just a last-minute public relations stunt as the timeline for the Corps’ determination as to whether the impacts from GPT would be de minimis to the Lummi Nation is impending.

Just like I think it’s not likely that Cloud Peak would ever exercise its options to mine coal on Crow Reservation land, per the company’s signed exploration and option to lease agreement with the Crow Tribe in Jan 2013.

Here is my cautionary note regarding my forward looking statements/comments in my post:
“I might be wrong about all this, but this is my gut feeling.”

Read Sandy’s post on her Facebook page here.