Coal’s ‘good times’ expected to extend a couple of years longer – by Henry Lazenby (MiningWeekly.com – September 30, 2017)

http://www.miningweekly.com/

VANCOUVER (miningweekly.com) – Following “decade of misery” for the steel markets, the “good times” are now, though how long it will last is debatable, according to H&W Worldwide Consulting principal Dr Neil Bristow.

Addressing delegates at the Vancouver-based Coal Association of Canada’s annual conference, on Thursday, Bristow noted that, assuming “business as usual” continues, the global steel industry could see a sustained period of prosperity.

“Twenty-eighteen looks positive and trends suggest 2019 could see more of the same. There is more uncertainty in 2019, but a continuation of benign policy settings and a lack of disjointed policy changes could lead to an extension of further ‘good times’,” he said.

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Cobalt’s Chemistry Experiment – by David Fickling (Bloomberg News – September 28, 2017)

https://www.bloomberg.com/

All batteries are not created equal. The 53 kilowatt-hour pack on a 2008 Tesla Inc. Roadster contains an estimated 38 kilograms of cobalt, a key element that some analysts fear may be running out. The same-sized battery on a 2017 Tesla would have about one-eighth of that, or 4.8 kilograms.

That’s the best reason to be wary of predictions that cobalt is heading toward permanently higher prices north of $100,000 a metric ton. The complex chemistry on which rechargeable batteries depends offers myriad opportunities to economize on any material that gets too costly.

Cobalt is a crucial ingredient for manufacturing most lithium-ion cathodes — the “positive” ends of the cell, equivalent to the nipple atop a conventional AAA battery. Demand for such cathodes is set to soar as the world’s vehicle fleet shifts from petroleum to electrical drive-trains, and as utilities build farms of rechargeable batteries to stabilize renewables-intensive power grids.

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World’s largest coal miner looking to buy metal mines abroad – by Sudarshan Varadhan (Reuters U.S. – September 29, 2017)

https://www.reuters.com/

NEW DELHI (Reuters) – Coal India Ltd, the world’s largest coal miner, has held internal talks to discuss buying metal mines abroad amid faltering revenues and rising employee costs, potentially signaling a strategy shift to cut reliance on the fossil fuel.

The state-run company plans to form two units: one to manage its local mining of iron ore, bauxite and manganese, and another to expand into copper and nickel mining overseas, two company officials involved in the planning told Reuters.

“The plans of Coal India to enter into metal mining business both in India and abroad are in a very nascent stage, and of strategic and confidential nature,” the company said.

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Major Grassroots Victory: Last Coal Export Terminal Goes Down In The Northwest – by Mary Anne Hitt (Huffington Post – September 27, 2017)

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/

Mary Anne Hitt is the Director of the Sierra Club Beyond Coal Campaign.

Grassroots leaders just won a major victory for public health and the climate. The last surviving coal export terminal proposed in the Northwest was denied a permit by the state, spelling the end for the project.

On Tuesday the Washington Department of Ecology denied a necessary water quality permit for the proposed Millennium Bulk Terminals coal export facility in Longview, citing the project’s negative impacts on climate, clean air, and water. This renders the project formally dead!

If you needed a reminder that people power can defeat polluters with big money, have I got a story for you. This project was one of six coal export terminals proposed in the Northwest over the past decade, as coal mining companies promised big markets in Asia were hungry for coal mined in Montana and Wyoming.

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[Australia Coal Mine] The hunt for Adani’s 10,000 jobs brings up ‘zero results’ – by Charis Chang (News.com.au – September 27, 2017)

http://www.news.com.au/

THERE’S a bit of an in-joke among Townsville residents about Adani’s mega coal mining project that if you ask them to explain, is an instant conversation killer. The first time I hear it is from a local scientist touching on some potential environmental concerns linked to the construction of railway line.

“Not having a go at it (the mine) but just making a point,” he says. “Coming from Townsville I’d be shot if I had a go at it.” There’s laughter among those listening but when I ask him later to clarify, the conversation takes on a serious tone and he’s reluctant to expand further.

He tells me opinion within Townsville is split and when I ask him if he feels he can’t be open he says: “I just feel like without having all the information I wouldn’t want to judge either way”.

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How Merkel’s Green Energy Policy Has Fueled Demand for Coal – by Brian Parkin and Weixin Zha (Bloomberg News – September 21, 2017)

https://www.bloomberg.com/

Germany still gets 40 percent of its electricity from coal-fired plants.

By 2030, the eastern German town of Poedelwitz will likely be razed to get at the rich veins of coal beneath its half-timbered houses. The reason: Chancellor Angela Merkel’s effort to steer Germany toward greener energy, which has unexpectedly meant booming demand for dirty coal.

While Merkel aims to wean the country from nuclear power and boost renewable energy, the shift has been slow—Germany’s 140-plus coal-fired plants last year supplied 40 percent of the country’s electricity—and Poedelwitz is flanked by open-pit lignite mines that feed a 2 gigawatt power plant a few miles away.

“This is unparalleled destruction of the environment,” says Jens Hausner, a farmer who has seen 17 of his 20 hectares consumed by digging equipment that looks like something out of a Mad Max movie. In a bit more than a decade, the hulking machines are expected to claw through the town’s 13th-century church and 40 or so remaining homes.

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Paris is dead. The global warming deniers have won – by Lawrence Solomon (Financial Post – September 22, 2017)

http://business.financialpost.com/

Paris came to New York this week, with leaders of countries signing the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement coming to the United Nations to chide, nudge or beseech Donald Trump in hopes he would reverse his decision to scrap the agreement.

The U.K.’s Theresa May, France’s Emmanuel Macron and Justin Trudeau, among others, could have saved their breath. Since his pullout in June, Trump has repeatedly reaffirmed the wisdom of pulling out of the “bad deal” for the U.S. that was Paris. All the evidence that has since come down only bolsters his case.

Shortly after Trump announced the pullout, stats from the Global Coal Plant Tracker portal confirmed that coal is on a tear, with 1600 plants planned or under construction in 62 countries. The champion of this coal-building binge is China, which boasts 11 of the world’s 20 largest coal-plant developers, and which is building 700 of the 1600 new plants, many in foreign countries, including high-population countries such as Egypt and Pakistan that until now have burned little or no coal.

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Trump’s Breathtaking Hypocrisy on Coal Mining – by Vivian E. Thomson (Scientific American – September 22, 2017)

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/

Pres. Donald Trump’s contempt for climate change science is well known. Now we see that his administration has put on hold a study of the connections between mountaintop coal mining and the health of nearby communities—research that was requested by West Virginia health authorities and is being conducted by the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine. This action demonstrates the president’s disregard for the health of coal miners, their families and their friends.

I have a bit of experience in this area, as a former air pollution regulator. From 2002 to 2010, while a full-time faculty member at the University of Virginia, I was a member of the Virginia State Air Pollution Control Board. Virginia is a longtime coal state, and the board confronted several controversial issues concerning coal-related air pollution. Among them, in 2009, was a case of dust pollution in southwestern Virginia.

In a country hollow in the Appalachian town of Roda, Va., coal trucks were driving along a narrow, steep-sided road leading to and from the area’s surface mines, which have scarred the landscape in every direction. Streams of trucks were raising clouds of dirt in their wakes, as coal dust in their beds and mud caked on the trucks flew into the air. Residents counted 10 trucks per hour, 20 hours a day, on weekdays.

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Glencore industrial dispute putting pressure on NSW coal supplies – by Mark Ludlow and Angela Macdonald-Smith (Australian Financial Review – September 20, 2017)

http://www.afr.com/

Protracted industrial action at 10 of Glencore’s NSW coal mines and a congested rail network are contributing to supply issues in Australia’s largest state, with fears it could affect the grid’s ability to keep the lights on this summer.

Amid growing concerns about coal-fired power generators being unable to secure enough coal supplies, the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union has vowed to maintain the industrial unrest at Glencore mines where negotiations have stalled over 10 separate enterprise agreements.

CFMEU national president Tony Maher said the industrial action organised by the unions at about eight mines across the Hunter Valley had had a “material” impact on Glencore’s operations and was affecting their ability to supply coal to customers.

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COLUMN-Coal’s rally isn’t all about China, it’s also quality, supply – by Clyde Russell (Reuters U.S. – September 18, 2017)

https://www.reuters.com/

LAUNCESTON, Australia, Sept 18 (Reuters) – It is increasingly popular to write obituaries for coal, with analysts, market watchers, investors and utility bosses leaping on the bandwagon, declaiming that the days of the polluting fuel are numbered.

Certainly the long-term outlook for coal is becoming less certain as more countries commit to ending, or severely curtailing, use of the fuel. But while the doomsayers may eventually be proven correct, coal is enjoying a stellar year, particularly in Asia, the main demand centre.

The price of benchmark prices for thermal coal at Australia’s Newcastle Port slipped toward the end of last week, but still ended above $100 a tonne on Sept. 15. The contract rose 45 percent from the closing low of $71.30 a tonne on May 16 to a peak of $103.50 on Sept. 12, providing a bonanza for miners in Australia and Indonesia, the two largest exporters of thermal coal used in power stations.

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Coal processing given green light at Cape Breton’s Donkin mine (Halifax Chronicle Herald – September 12, 2017)

http://m.thechronicleherald.ca/

Kameron Collieries ULC, the owner of the Donkin Coal Mine in Cape Breton, has started operating its coal handling, preparation and processing plant or washplant.

Morien Resources Corp. of Dartmouth, a former part-owner of the Donkin project, put out a release Monday stating that it received notice from Kameron that its washplant was operational.

Morien owns a gross production royalty of two per cent on the first 500,000 tonnes of coal sales per quarter, excluding the initial 10,000 tonnes of coal produced and sold from Donkin and four per cent on any coal sales from quarterly tonnage above 500,000 tonnes.

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Coalition to allow government-backed loans to coalmines as banks hesitant – by Gareth Hutchens (The Guardian – September 11, 2017)

https://www.theguardian.com/

The Turnbull government has responded to the increasing unwillingness of Australia’s banks to fund major coal projects by overturning a ban on government-backed loans to domestic miners.

Steve Ciobo, the minister for trade, says protesters and activist groups have so discouraged Australia’s retail banks from financing “otherwise viable exporters in the coal sector” that the government must step in to fund a growing “market gap.”

He said government funding would now be provided via the Export Finance and Insurance Corporation (Efic), and he has written to Efic asking it to change its mandate to broaden its lending criteria. Earlier this year, the financial regulator warned that climate change posed a material risk to the entire financial system, urging companies to start adapting.

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A Deadly Disease That Strikes Coal Miners Has Returned in Australia – by Perry Williams (Bloomberg News – September 8, 2017)

https://www.bloomberg.com/

Claustrophobia never bothered Keith Stoddart as he sheared coal from the wall of a long, narrow and dusty tunnel hundreds of meters underground in northeastern Australia. Now, racked by a progressive, deadly lung disease, the 68-year-old gets panicked by pangs of shortness of breath.

His illness had been absent since the mid 1980s in Australia, the world’s top coal-exporting country. At least, that’s what records showed until May 2015, when mine-veterans like Stoddart began presenting in doctors’ rooms with an irreversible scourge from a bygone era: black lung disease.

Twenty-five cases of so-called coal workers’ pneumoconiosis have since been confirmed in Stoddart’s home state of Queensland, government records show. Many of them were missed by routine medical screening, and all of them point to weaknesses in modern mining technologies and dust controls that the government is now trying to fix.

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Coal push may be disaster insurance the grid doesn’t need – by Tim Loh and Mark Chediak(Washington Post – August 25, 2017)

http://business.financialpost.com/

‘The U.S. ought not to mortgage itself up to the hilt by making rash decisions that could very well harm the economy of the U.S. in 10 years’

If all hell breaks loose on the U.S. power grid — a terrorist blows up a key natural gas pipeline, say, in the midst of a frigid winter — how will Americans keep the lights on?

The answer is coal, according to a growing collection of the industry’s leaders and lobbyists. Their pitch conveys an image of a nation plunged into darkness as solar farms, wind turbines and plants fueled by gas fail to make up for the loss of coal-fired generation. Though it’s a view at least partly supported by a Department of Energy study released late Wednesday, the reality isn’t so dire.

Coal companies’ pleas for protection come as President Donald Trump vows to make good on campaign promises to support an industry hit by low-cost renewable energy and abundant gas from shale reservoirs. Energy Secretary Rick Perry called in April for his department to investigate whether rising supplies of wind and solar energy are threatening the grid’s reliability.

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Chinese Coal, Global Tremors – by David Fickling (Bloomberg News – August 29, 2017)

https://www.bloomberg.com/

It’s tempting to view a merger between giant state-owned Chinese companies as a strictly internal affair. But make no mistake: The combination of the country’s largest coal miner with one of its top five power generators will have ramifications around the world.

To see why, it’s worth looking at how the integration with electricity producer China Guodian Corp. will change miner Shenhua Group Corp.Shenhua’s size and reach give it a crucial position in China’s internal power market.

It sold almost 400 million metric tons of coal last year, equivalent to about two-thirds of the amount used in power generation in the U.S. It owns a rail network that could reach from New York to Miami, stretching from the Mongolian border, through the Shaanxi coal belt, to Huanghua port on the Yellow Sea.

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