Coal production has been on the wane for a number of years as Americans move toward cheaper, cleaner alternatives like natural gas and the industry struggles to cope with tighter environmental regulations imposed by the Obama administration.

Saving the coal industry is part of Trump’s 100-day action plan and, although he has not given any specifics so far, his campaign trail promises included rescinding the EPA’s Clean Power Plan and the Mercury and Air Toxics Rule.

Trump’s campaign promises of reviving the coal industry helped him win over voters in places like Wyoming, West Virginia and other states hard hit by declining production of the energy source. Now as he readies to enter the White House, many of the voters are looking to see when – and, maybe more importantly, how – the incoming president will fulfill that promise.

Besides Keystone XL and the coal, there a number of projects either on hold or in the exploratory phase that could move under the Trump administration — especially in regards to copper and gold.

Pebble Mine, in Alaska’s Bristol Bay watershed, contains one of the world’s largest deposits of copper, gold and molybdenum, but the project has been hampered since its inception over concerns from environmentalists, Native Americans and local politicians that toxic residue from the mine could harm the world’s largest population of sockeye salmon and endanger the $252 million-a-year local fishing industry.

Trump has not weighed in on the issue, but Sarah Palin — Alaska’s former governor who is rumored to be on Trump’s short list for Interior Secretary – helped ease the path for what would be one of the world’s largest open pit mines by appointing mining industry officials to lead her Department of Natural Resources and embracing resource extraction.

Offshore Drilling in the Atlantic

The Obama administration recently moved to restrict drilling in waters off the Eastern Seaboard from 2017 to 2022, but environmentalists, fishermen and those in the East Coast’s tourism industry want to make that restriction permanent before Trump comes into office.

Despite his vocal stance on U.S. energy independence and support of increased oil and gas development, Trump’s stance toward offshore drilling in the Atlantic has been vague — saying only that he backs it when “done responsibly” — but if he green-lights drilling in the Atlantic it would make him many friends in U.S. oil and gas companies and could open the possibility to expand drilling other U.S. waters.

Obama, however, could prevent this by invoking an obscure section of the 1953 Outer Continental Shelf Act that would make it difficult, maybe impossible, for future presidents to reverse the ban. He has used the act before to safeguard parts of Alaska’s Bristol Bay and parts of the Arctic.

“That’s the big question,” David Goldston, the director of government affairs at the Natural Resources Defense Council, told FoxNews.com. “Will the Obama administration go beyond the five-year ban?”

While a permananet ban is still in question, late last week Obama blocked the sale of new oil and gas drilling rights in the Chukchi and Beaufort seas north of Alaska for the next five years — a move that was praised by enviromentalists and largely scorned by oil industry represenatives.

“Once again, we see the attitude that Washington knows best — an attitude that contributed to last week’s election results,” Randall Luthi, president of the National Ocean Industries Association, told The Assocuated Press in reference to Trump’s surprise victory over Democrat Hillary Clinton. –FOX News