A significant portion of the coal produced at the Decker mine has historically gone by train to the Midwest Energy Resources Company (MERC) site in Superior, WI, unloaded there, and then placed onto vessels for ultimate delivery to coal plants located along the Great Lakes. The amount of coal being brought in to Superior has really declined the last couple years, not necessarily because of actions in the US (though there's no denying the future of coal in the US does not look bright), but because of what's happened in Canada.
Coal has essentially been abandoned as an energy source in Canada in general, and the province of Ontario in particular. Several large coal-fired power plants in Ontario that were receiving regular shipments of coal out of Superior have shifted to natural gas or renewables, causing MERC to lose a big chunk of business.
To combat this loss, as well as losses that loom due to United States policy, MERC has been pushing to establish export deals, especially with European markets. There's been some success to date, with a deal to send coal out of Superior to the Netherlands and Spain, but so far not enough is being exported to make up for the business that has been lost. The ramifications are being felt all along the railroad tracks and, now, all the way to the mine in southeast Montana. The Duluth News-Tribune has covered this with some articles over the past year, but the links to those have long died. Still, I'm sure you could find some more information by running adequate terms through Google.With regard to the issue of BNSF having trouble attracting crews to eastern Montana and North Dakota, yes, my hunch is that readers would be interested. Certainly I am.
By the way, there's something Bakken-related I can work into this comment. Because of the decrease in demand for coal at places like the port in Superior and elsewhere in the Midwest and along the East Coast, BNSF recently announced that some trains that normally would have passed through Minot and Williston on their way between Chicago and the Pacific Northwest will be shifted to BNSF's historically coal-laden corridor that runs southwest from Chicago and passes through Iowa, Nebraska, and northern Wyoming. The main reasons cited were in order to make room for more oil trains set to come out of the Bakken region, as well as the railroad's continuing difficulty to attract crews to eastern Montana and North Dakota, which I think most honest observers would attribute at least partially to union regulations (I can explain that in greater detail, if desired).
FWIW, Trains Magazine was the one to report on the traffic shifts and a link to what was said is at (http://trn.trains.com/Railroad%20News/News%20Wire/2012/11/Bakken%20oil%20increase%20shifts%20other%20traffic%20around%20BNSF.aspx). It's behind a paywall, though, but what I typed was the crux of the article.
Thank you for taking the time to provide the background to a very complex story.
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A Note for the Granddaughters
On a completely different note: during the early 70's, specifically the 1973 oil embargo, I honestly thought "we" might run out of gasoline and/or energy in general. I was quite concerned. I was going to school in Los Angeles at the time. I started taking the bus: that tells you how concerned I was, using the LA bus system. My roommate was never worried; he continued to drive to school every day. I did not ride with him; I truly thought "it" was all over -- our economy. Talk about naive.
One of the "nice" things to have come out of the domestic coal story is the realization that "we" will "never" run out of fuel. That coal we are not using will be around for centuries.
Not only will coal be around for centuries, it will provide a ceiling in the price Americans pay for energy: if other energy gets too expensive, we will return to coal. I feel very, very badly for all the laid-off coal workers who may not find new work that pays as well, but the current situation tells me that the US energy future looks very, very good.
