The Demise of the US Coal Industry

Updates

December 13, 2012: hundreds attend hearings in Vancouver, WA, regarding new terminals to ship coal to Asia. Economic suicide groups. 

June 25, 2012: the perfect storm. The administration vowed to kill the coal industry; the faux environmentalists put the regulations in place years ago; and, now, natural gas is so inexpensive, it looks like the administration has accomplished its mission. And with the demise of the coal industry, the end of a lot of pollution abatement. We're talking billions of dollars.

An indication of how much new emissions rules and cheaper natural gas have hammered the value of coal-burning generation will come when Exelon announces the results of the first big sale of U.S. coal-fired power plants in four years.

Exelon, the largest U.S. power company, may have to take a 40 percent discount for three Maryland plants it’s seeking to sell by the end of August. Bidders including NRG Energy Inc. have offered $600 million to $700 million for the units, which have a fair value of $1 billion, ...

Original Post

At Yahoo!InPlay:

9:00AM Alpha Natural Resources to reduce coal production from Kentucky Mines: Co plans to curtail coal mining operations in its northern and southern Kentucky business units as continued market pressures and new regulations on coal-fired power plants make production from certain mines in those areas uneconomic. Alpha's Kentucky affiliates will discontinue mining at four mines and idle two coal preparation plants in Pike and Martin counties. Production will be scaled back at several other mines, and four contract mines will close. In aggregate the production cuts will reduce Alpha's shipments of thermal coal by an additional two million tons this year and four million tons in 2013.