Several Interesting Stories About Coal Industry Coming Out of Wyoming

An entire wrap-up of the Wyoming energy industry can be found here.

These are the stories that got me excited, considering this was the administration that was out to kill the coal industry, or at least bankrupt domestic coal-using utilities.

There is just to much to cover, so only the headlines, some data points, and the links:


Secretary of Interior to Wyoming to make major announcement.

Feds open 750 million tons of Wyoming coal to miners.

• "Vast amount" of coal; will take years to mine.
• Salazar: coal will remain important part of nation's energy policy for some time.
• Administration continues to support nuclear industry (comment: of course, they do: GE/CEO is the economic czar; nuclear energy industry provides campaign contributions; hunch: we are not going to see a new nuclear reactor built in this country in a new location in my investing lifetime)

Obama administration touts conventional energy 

By the way, who is shipping all that coal? Burlington Northern Santa Fe, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the "sage of Omaha."

My hunch is that there was a bit of double-speak with regard to "coal being an important part of this nation's energy policy for some time." My hunch is that utilities will be moving toward natural gas, and this coal will be shipped to China.

Coal will be major source of electricity for decades to come.  Yup, especially in light of recent Japanese nuclear disaster.