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The agency’s regulators are to announce their decision no later than Sept. 30.
Last year, the Canadian Pacific said it would pay almost $1.5 billion for the DM&E and its subsidiaries. It would cost another $1 billion if the company expands to Wyoming’s Powder River Basin coal fields.
Thune, R-S.D., told civic leaders in Huron Wednesday that the CP is concentrating on the DM&E acquisition before moving on to a Powder River Basin decision.
The DM&E has had a proposal for about 10 years to rebuild 600 miles of track in South Dakota and Minnesota and build 260 miles of track to the coal fields. The expansion is estimated to cost $6 billion.
The expansion is “very much, I think, on their radar screen,” Thune said of the Canadian Pacific. “It makes a lot of sense for a lot of reasons.
“They’re watching carefully what happens in Washington, too, on energy policy because if there’s a lessening of the commitment to coal-fired power, that would affect obviously the decision to build out there, too.”
Thune said he has met with Canadian Pacific officials about the matter.
“There’s still an awful lot of resistance ... from some pretty big players,” he said, adding that he hopes there’s enough “forward momentum” behind the merger and the coal train project that it eventually will get done.
Earlier this year, one of the project’s opponents, the Mayo Clinic of Rochester, Minn., asked the Surface Transportation Board to require the Canadian Pacific and DM&E to carry out a list of mitigating actions before the board approves the acquisition.
