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Coal’s energy role is diminishing, and it’s not going to bounce back in the U.S., panel says – by Tom Lutey (Billings Gazette – April 6, 2018)

http://billingsgazette.com/

The Western coal economy is likely to continue on for a few decades in a much smaller scale, concluded panelists at a “future of coal” conference in Billings on Friday.

With fewer power plants burning the fossil fuel and competition from cheap natural gas, wind and solar energy, coal’s contribution to the nation’s electricity production has dropped to 30 percent, down from 52 percent 20 years ago. The fossil fuel isn’t going to bounce back in the United States.

However, the world isn’t done burning coal, said Todd O’Hair, senior manager of government affairs for Cloud Peak Energy. Global demand for coal is increasing. Cloud Peak’s Spring Creek Mine in southeast Montana exports coal to Japan and South Korea.

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BHP says to quit global coal lobby group, stick with U.S. Chamber of Commerce (Reuters U.S. – April 4, 2018)

https://www.reuters.com/

SYDNEY (Reuters) – Global miner BHP Billiton (BHP.AX) (BLT.L) said on Thursday it had made a final decision to leave the World Coal Association (WCA) over differences on climate change but would remain a member of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

BHP has largely quit mining coal for power plants, but is the world’s largest exporter of coal for steel-making. It said in December it had taken a preliminary decision to withdraw from the WCA, pending a full review.

The miner came under pressure from Australian green groups last year to leave any industry associations with policies that fail to match the company’s support of the 2015 Paris climate accord.

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Trump Makes American Coal Great Again — Overseas – by Keith Johnson (Foreign Policy – April 4, 2018)

https://foreignpolicy.com/

U.S. coal exports have exploded. Can that continue?

President Donald Trump vowed to make U.S. energy dominance a cornerstone of his foreign policy, and, sure enough, the United States this year is producing and exporting record amounts of oil and natural gas.

More surprising, though, is the huge resurgence in U.S. exports of coal to countries all over the world, from Argentina to Ukraine. It’s a big silver lining for the beleaguered coal sector that has seen production and exports steadily dwindle in recent years.

But it’s not such great news for U.S. steelmakers, who are watching global rivals gobble up American coal to feed their steel mills — and who then turn around and export millions of tons of steel to the United States, prompting the Trump administration to levy tariffs on lots of imported steel.

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President Trump has yet to save the struggling coal industry, numbers show – by Michael Collins (USA TODAY – April 4, 2018)

https://www.usatoday.com/

WASHINGTON — President Trump was in a celebratory mood early last spring as he prepared to sign an executive order rolling back environmental protections reviled by the nation’s coal industry.

Turning to the miners beside him at the ceremony, Trump repeated a promise that he made often during his campaign for president. “You’re going back to work,” he said to nods of approval and applause.

But not much has changed for the nation’s ailing coal industry since Trump moved into the White House. Coal employment and production are up just slightly, coal consumption is down and coal prices have fallen a little below where they were the day that Trump took office.

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What anti-Adani protestors can learn from the Jabiluka blockade – by Scott Ludlam (The Guardian – April 2, 2018)

https://www.theguardian.com/

Like anti-Adani protesters today, those who stood up at Jabiluka were attacked. It’s good to remember that people can prevail

ne of Australia’s proudest land rights struggles is passing an important anniversary: it is 20 years since the establishment of the blockade camp at Jabiluka in Kakadu national park. This was the moment at which push would come to shove at one of the world’s largest high-grade uranium deposits. The industry would push, and people power would shove right back.

The blockade set up a confrontation between two very different kinds of power: on the one side, the campaign was grounded in the desire for self-determination by the Mirarr traditional Aboriginal owners, particularly the formidable senior traditional owner Yvonne Margarula.

They were supported by a tiny handful of experienced paid staff and backed by an international network of environment advocates, volunteer activists and researchers.

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Prairie Mining starts legal action against Poland’s environment ministry (Reuters U.S. – April 3, 2018)

https://www.reuters.com/

WARSAW, April 3 (Reuters) – Australia’s Prairie Mining said it filed a lawsuit in a Warsaw civil court on Friday against the Polish environment ministry, seeking an extension to the company’s exclusive rights to a mining project in the country.

The news sent the miner’s shares plunging 30 percent in London and 20 percent in Warsaw. Prairie Mining secured in 2015 the exclusive right to apply for a mining concession for the Jan Karski mine in southeast Poland and had until April 2, 2018 to file its application.

The company said in a statement on Tuesday that it had not been able to apply for the concession because it first needs to obtain an environmental permit from local authorities, which it said has been delayed.

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Rio Tinto’s Coal Canary Stops Tweeting – by David Fickling (Bloomberg News – March 28, 2018)

https://www.bloomberg.com/

Prices at Australia’s Newcastle port, the largest export harbor for the thermal coal used in power generation, have held above $90 a metric ton for eight months, the best run since the market peaked between 2010 and 2012, only dropping below that level this week.

Glencore Plc’s energy business — essentially a coal-mining operation with a droplet of oil thrown in 1 — generated as much profit in 2017 as in the previous three years put together, and accounted for a quarter of group earnings. This month is one of the dozen best for coal deal-making activity since the start of 2006, data compiled by Bloomberg show.

That could make Rio Tinto Group’s decision to exit the last of its coal mines seem quixotic at best. While the sales of its Kestrel and Hail Creek mines and Valeria and Winchester South projects will generate about $4.15 billion (enough on paper to leave Rio debt-free), they’ll make it an increasingly iron ore-dependent business.

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Judge says officials must consider reduced coal mining to address climate change (Casper Star Tribune – March 26, 2018)

http://trib.com/

CHEYENNE — U.S. government officials who engage in regional planning for an area of Wyoming and Montana that supplies 40 percent of the nation’s coal must consider reducing coal mining as a way to fight climate change, a judge has ruled.

Friday’s ruling by U.S. District Judge Brian Morris in Great Falls, Montana, applies to the Powder River Basin, where house-sized dump trucks haul loads mined around the clock from open-pit coal mines. Some of the mines measure more than a mile wide.

Morris rejected U.S. Bureau of Land Management officials’ argument that climate change could be addressed when they consider whether to allow individual mine expansions.

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Motor Mouth: The inconvenient truth about China, Norway’s EV subsidies – by David Booth (Driving.ca – March 16, 2018)

http://driving.ca/

If there is one constant refrain from the electric vehicle lobby, it is the deification of Norway and China as leaders in the automobile’s green revolution. Indeed, “Why can’t we be more like Beijing or Oslo?” is probably the most popular comment on any Internet forum relating to the lack of progress in electrifying our North American fleet.

And it’s an image both countries take pains to promote: One of the key speakers at this year’s Canadian International Auto Show was Morten Edvardsen, senior political adviser for the Norwegian EV Association, whose whole message seemed to be, ah, “Why can’t Canada be more like Norway?”

At first glance there is much to covet. Norway, as Edvardsen took great pains to point out, has the highest penetration of electric vehicles per population — 216 per 10,000 inhabitants, roughly 20 times than that in Canada — and market share — about 35 per cent of all cars sold in Norway in 2017 were plug-ins.

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Glencore snaps up Rio Tinto’s Hail Creek coal mine, project for $1.7 billion – by Tom Westbrook (Reuters U.S. – March 20, 2018)

https://www.reuters.com/

SYDNEY (Reuters) – Glencore is buying Rio Tinto’s Hail Creek coal mine and the Valeria coal project in Australia for $1.7 billion, tightening the Swiss trading and mining giant’s grip on coal as its rivals exit the industry.

The acquisition, announced by both companies on Tuesday, follows Glencore’s purchase of half of Rio Tinto’s Hunter Valley coal operations, also in Australia, for $1.1 billion last year in a deal with China’s Yancoal Australia Ltd.

Glencore is already the world’s biggest exporter of thermal coal used for power stations, and Hail Creek will give it a bigger stake in metallurgical coal used for steelmaking.

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Could this ‘clean coal’ plant proposal be answer to Indiana’s 17 billion tons of reserves? – by Sarah Bowman and Emily Hopkins (Indianapolis Star – March 18, 2018)

https://www.indystar.com/

When it comes to coal, the United States is what the Middle East is for oil. That fact is not lost on an industry competing for relevancy at a time when it’s undersold by natural gas and renewable energy. It’s not lost on the coal-producing towns in the nation that have long relied on the mineral for jobs and economic development.

And it’s certainly not lost on Greg Merle, whose company is pitching what he hopes — what he believes — might just be the answer for a declining industry desperate to remain viable.

Merle is the president of Riverview Energy Corporation, which is proposing to build a “clean coal” diesel plant in Spencer County. It would be the first such plant in the U.S., quite possibly pushing Indiana to the forefront of the nation’s often contentious and political debate over clean coal.

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Copper could be the solution for displaced coal miners on the Navajo Reservation – by Ryan Randazzo (Arizona Republic – March 15, 2018)

https://www.azcentral.com/

With the impending closure of the Navajo Generating Station coal-fired power plant near Page in December 2019, hundreds of power plant workers and coal miners will need new jobs. Arizona’s copper mines could offer them opportunity.

Thanks to rebounding copper prices, copper mines across Arizona have hundreds of job openings today. The major companies, Freeport-McMoRan Inc., Resolution Copper and Asarco, all said they would be interested in hiring displaced workers from Peabody Energy’s Kayenta Mine should it close.

“Increasing copper prices, from $2 in January 2015 to $3.20 in February, has driven increased production and exploration, and additional employment is sure to follow,” said Steve Trussell, executive director of the Arizona Mining Association.

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Cape Breton Miners’ Museum to install simulator to recreate mining experience (CBC News Nova Scotia – March 14, 2018)

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/

Museum will receive $1.5M from federal government for upgrades

The Cape Breton Miners’ Museum has received just over $1.5 million for upgrades to recreate the mining experience. “This is like a dream come true,” said museum executive director Mary Pat Mombourquette.

“This is going to help us create a vital, dynamic museum that will immerse our visitors in the coal-mining experience. I can’t wait to start making it happen.”

The money from the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency and Heritage Canada will pay for the construction of a briefing room and a lamp house, recreating a miner’s daily trip to and from the mine. The museum in Glace Bay, N.S., already famously features a guided tour of an actual underground coal mine.

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Don’t let mining companies kill plan to help coal miners, families through land reclamation – by Rev. Mitchell C. Hescox (Louisville Courier-Journal – March 16, 2018)

https://www.courier-journal.com/

The Rev. Mitchell C. Hescox serves as President/C.E.O. of The Evangelical Environmental Network. Before his call to ordained ministry, he served the coal and utility industry as Director of Fuel Systems for Allis Mineral Systems.

In the book of Micah, the Bible tells us “to act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” Nowhere is that more needed than the coal towns of Appalachia, where jobs have withered, including over 13,000 lost in Kentucky alone.

Many in my family are among the millions who supplied America’s energy needs for the past century. From Harlan County, Kentucky, to Cambria County, Pennsylvania, coal dust runs in my blood.

Both my grandfathers suffered black lung disease, my dad suffered a mine-related serious back injury, and I spent the first decade and a half of my career in the coal industry before becoming an evangelical pastor.

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India’s Power Ministry seeks higher railway rakes count to avoid coal shortages – by Ajoy K Das (MiningWeekly.com – March 13, 2018)

http://www.miningweekly.com/

KOLKATA (miningweekly.com) – With power demand poised to peak during the summer months and coal shortages at thermal power plant looming large, the Power Ministry is seeking a sharp rise in the availability of rakes for coal transportation from government-owned and -operated Indian Railways.

In the course of meetings between the Power and Railways Ministries, the former has sought that Indian Railways make available at least 500 rakes a day, as stock volumes are below stipulated levels at more than 50 thermal power plants across the country.

The Power Ministry has said that the situation is likely to be aggravated as power demand rises along with the mercury in the summer months ahead.

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