Coal may be king in Wyoming, but oil is making steady inroads.The state budget forecast, released last last month, shows that last year, for the first time in decades, oil accounted for a larger share of state severance tax revenues than coal. Wyoming Department of Revenue Director Dan Noble says it will likely overtake natural gas in the coming year as well. “Oil is the new big game in town,” he said.
Even so, overall, coal still accounted for a lion’s share of the state’s mineral revenues because of federal coal royalties and coal lease bonuses. But the bump in oil revenues comes at a good time, with coal production dropping. Noble says he’s confident that oil will continue to be a strong contributor to the state revenue picture, even though prices have plummeted in recent months
“It is a volatile market and that it could easily swing the other way just as easily as it did this way,” he said.
The state will revisit its revenue projections in January.