US Coal Exports To Set New Record -- Breaks 1981 Record -- Nothing To Do With The Bakken

Trivia

Q: At the turn of the century (1911, e.g.), how much coal did an American Line passenger steamship (such as the the SS New York or the SS Philadelphia) burn per hour?

A: "To produce the superheated steam to drive these engines, the ships' boilers consumed about 13 tons of coal per hour. -- Eugene O'Neill and Dat Ole Devil Sea, Robert A. Richter, c. 2004, page 69.  Passage from New York to Southampton (England) generally took "a week." 24 x 7 x 13 = 2,184 tons of coal per trip. 

Updates

October 29, 2012: an alert reader caught the Bloomberg error. It should be 113 million tons.

Original Post

Link here to Bloomberg.

U.S. coal exports are on track to break their annual record of 113 billion (sic) tons, set in 1981, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Wow, this really caught me off-guard, with all the stories this past year, how badly domestic coal companies were doing.

This tells me that:

• domestic consumption of coal has historically far outstripped what we sent overseas
• despite environmental efforts to stop coal exports, a fair amount of coal is still being exported (just one of many links for this source)
• the insatiable demand for energy continues (perhaps spurred by the Japanese nuclear debacle; the Chinese need for energy) 

Good, bad, or indifferent -- it just surprised me: that US coal exports will break the record set in 1981 -- over 30 years ago.