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Coal, Climate and Orangutans in Indonesia – by Daniel Stiles (The Epoche Times – October 24, 2014)

http://www.theepochtimes.com/

What do the climate and orangutans have in common? They are both threatened by coal – the first by burning it, and the second by mining it.

At the recent United Nations Climate Summit in New York, world leaders and multinational corporations pledged a variety of actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and deforestation to avert a looming disaster caused by global warming.

Indonesia, home to most of the world’s orangutans, is a major player in both emissions and deforestation, with the third largest tropical forest area in the world, after the Amazon and the Congo Basin. In 2012, Indonesia surpassed Brazil as the country with the highest annual rate of primary forest loss. The country is also ranked the fourth top emitter of greenhouse gases in the world (after China, the U.S., and the European Union) during some years, largely due to high deforestation rates and peatland fires.

The New York Declaration on Forests, announced at the UN Climate Summit, called on partners to work to at least halve the rate of natural forest loss globally by 2020 and strive to end natural forest loss by 2030. It also targeted achieving a reduction in deforestation-related emissions by 4.5-8.8 billion tons per year by 2030.

The now-former Indonesia president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, announced in 2009 a voluntary commitment to reduce the country’s carbon footprint by 26 percent.

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Gordienko, Hunt, Cochrane and Sigurdson: Environmentalists get facts wrong about coal – (Vancouver Province – October 26, 2014)

http://www.theprovince.com/index.html

Mark Gordienko is president, International Longshore and Warehouse Union Canada; Steve Hunt is director, United Steel Workers District 3; Brian Cochrane is business manager, International Union of Operating Engineers Local 115; and Tom Sigurdson is executive director, B.C. Building Trades.

“I look at it from the perspective of the importance of coal…..in terms of employment, it’s huge here but I would remind city folk that it provides employment also for people in the Greater Vancouver area.” — Sparwood Mayor Lois Halko

While there has been much attention and controversy surrounding a small, proposed coal terminal — Fraser Surrey Docks — the larger picture of how important coal mining and exports are to British Columbia’s economy is being missed.

Our unions’ members are the coal miners and workers who ship steelmaking coal from B.C. to markets overseas, where steel is made to produce everything from cellphones to wind turbines to subway cars to surgical equipment.

B.C.’s coal sector employs 26,000 people directly and indirectly, creates $3.2 billion in economic activity and generates $715 million in tax revenues for the province and B.C. cities and towns every year.

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Coal Miners Fired in Appalachia Getting Hired in Wyoming – by Tim Loh (Bloomberg News – October 23, 2014)

http://www.bloomberg.com/

It’s boom times in Wyoming for embattled U.S. coal companies, where the mining industry is hiring workers while shedding them in Appalachia.

Alpha Natural Resources Inc. (ANR), the second-largest U.S. producer, hasn’t posted a profit in three years and is closing money-losing mines in West Virginia amid plans to increase production out West by as much as 30 percent.

Miner Steven King is going along for the ride. After losing his job last month at the company’s Black Castle operation, King, 42, is getting ready to move his family 1,500 miles (2,400 kilometers) to a state he’s never visited to work at an Alpha site in Wyoming.

With the U.S. coal industry in its worst decline in decades, companies including Alpha and Peabody Energy Corp. (BTU), the biggest producer, are pivoting toward pockets of future profit. No prospect is bigger than the Powder River Basin, a high, mineral-rich plain of yellow grass and sagebrush stretching from central Wyoming to southern Montana.

“It’s going to be running a good while in Wyoming, because of how much coal they put out,” said King, who expects to start work by next month. While he doesn’t know what he’ll be earning, a friend made the move a year ago and since then his base pay has increased to about $35 an hour from $25.

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Indonesia’s Choice: Coal vs. Environment – by David Fogarty (Epoch Times – October 19, 2014)

http://www.theepochtimes.com/

Indonesia cannot build power stations fast enough. And neither can most of its Asian neighbors. Rapid economic and population growth are driving equally rapid demands for electricity as the region builds out power grids to connect up millions of people to fuel prosperity.

Electricity generation is forecast to nearly triple in Southeast Asia between 2011 and 2035, the International Energy Agency says, with fossil fuels providing most of the energy.

With a population of 600 million, nearly twice that of the United States, and about 130 million people without electricity, Southeast Asia faces an immense challenge to meet that demand in a cost-efficient manner that doesn’t cause serious air and water pollution and drive up health costs.

For Indonesia, the Asia energy story is a blessing worth untold riches in terms of royalties, money it needs to develop its economy and provide jobs. The IEA says demand for coal in Southeast Asia will rise 4.8 percent per year, with Indonesia in the geographic sweet spot to be the region’s main supplier.

In the wider Asia-Pacific, demand for coal will increase by 52.8 percent from 2010 to 2035, according to the Asian Development Bank.

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RPT-UPDATE 3-India’s Modi steps up economic reforms, eyes privatisation [coal sector] – by By Manoj Kumar and Krishna N Das (Reuters India – October 21, 2014)

http://in.reuters.com/

NEW DELHI, Oct 20 (Reuters) – India promised on Monday to open up the coal industry to private players and moved closer to selling a stake in a state-run oil company, as Prime Minister Narendra Modi picked up the pace on economic reform days after relaxing fuel price controls.

Using an executive order, the cabinet agreed to allow private Indian companies to mine and sell coal at an unspecified future date, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said. That sets the stage for the biggest liberalisation of the industry in more than 40 years.

The ruling party’s success in two state elections last week capped several days of action on the economic front and has given Modi more room to cut through a thicket of regulations and state controls he says holds back Asia’s third-largest economy.

“Reform is the art of the possible,” Jaitley earlier told TV network ET Now, hinting that more was to come. “In the first year, when people expect lot of reforms and there is lot of popular support behind the reform process, it is more easily possible.

Modi was elected in May on promises he would create jobs and rejuvenate the Indian economy, but investors and economists were disappointed by his first budget and a lack of early progress on fixing structural economic problems. In the last week, he has gone some way towards quelling those concerns, putting in a reform-minded team at the finance ministry that includes prominent economist Arvind Subramanian to help formulate the budget and policy.

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Poland’s coal miners dig in for struggle over restructuring – by Henry Foy (Financial Times – October 19, 2014)

http://www.ft.com/intl/companies/mining

Knurow, Poland – Almost 1km below the rolling hills of southern Poland, four men, their faces coated in a slick layer of coal dust and sweat, pilot a colossal grinder as it rips metre-wide chunks of glistening black coal from the walls of a narrow tunnel.

At temperatures above 30C, by the dim light of torches and surrounded by the deafening cacophony of the screaming grinder and a thundering conveyor belt, such men and their machines work 24 hours a day, six days a week, churning out a fuel that was supposed to be the answer to Poland’s energy problems. But it has not worked out that way.

Over 300km north, in Warsaw’s government meeting rooms, lit by bulbs that rely on coal for almost 90 per cent of their power, the country’s politicians and bureaucrats have been debating how to rescue an industry in existential crisis: chronically lossmaking, inefficient and under threat from external pressures.

Poland’s vast coal reserves, the second-largest in Europe, were seen as the energy ace up its sleeve – offsetting reliance on Russian resources and providing enough cheap, domestic fuel to power decades of economic growth.

But then the US shale boom sent coal prices tumbling and exposed vast inefficiencies across the country’s state-owned miners. At the same time, environmental concerns have led to pressure from the EU for Poland to wean itself off the black stuff.

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How Kentucky’s struggling miners view the country’s most expensive Senate race – by Luke Mullins (Yahoo News – October 2, 2014)

http://news.yahoo.com/

Mitch McConnell and Alison Lundergan Grimes are vying to be coal’s true champion. But are they merely perpetuating an industry’s mythology?

These days, Bobby Spare feels like the last man standing.

The 59-year-old engineer began working in eastern Kentucky’s coal fields 38 years ago, like his father and grandfather before him. With nothing more than a high school diploma, Spare landed a job with a local mining company and soon earned his engineer’s license. It was a fickle industry; bonuses one year, pink slips the next. But for nearly four decades, it provided a stable, middle-class living for Spare and his six children. Even during the tough years, Spare never lost faith that coal would keep the region’s economy afloat. Today, however, he isn’t so sure.

The headquarters of B&W Resources, the mining company Spare works for, is a one-story building in Clay County, a verdant slice of Kentucky carved out of the Appalachian foothills. Trucks carrying up to 42 tons of coal rumble past the office and dump their cargo into 100-foot-high piles. Inside the building, Spare fixes himself a cup of coffee and explains that he’s never seen the industry so defeated. Coal production in eastern Kentucky has plummeted to its lowest levels in a half-century, and nearly half of the region’s mining jobs have vanished since midyear 2011.

The collapse has been particularly painful here in Clay County, which, according to the New York Times, “just might be the hardest place to live in the United States,” on account of its high unemployment, meager household incomes, and short life expectancies. It’s one of the poorest counties in the nation.

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COLUMN-Coal industry still in denial over prices, regulation – by Clyde Russell (Reuters U.S. – October 15, 2014)

http://www.reuters.com/

Oct 15 (Reuters) – These days you would expect a gathering of coal industry executives to be a fairly gloomy affair, given the drop in prices to near seven-year lows, the increasing threat of regulation to control pollution and the general image of the fuel as the main climate change culprit.

You might hope for a sense of realism and practical moves to address the issues, but instead the World Coal Conference in Copenhagen this week was characterised by what seemed like a state of denial.

The first instance of denial is over the causes of the dramatic slump in prices, with European API2 futures falling this week to the lowest since 2007, and nearly half of what they fetched in 2011.

Spot thermal coal at Australia’s Newcastle port fell to $64.92 a tonne in the week ended Oct. 10, 1 cent higher than the previous week, which was the lowest since mid-2009.

A common question among the hundreds of delegates at the conference in the Danish capital was what was the outlook for demand in China and India, the world’s two biggest coal importers.

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Losing the War on Coal: One Virginia town’s painful decline – by Johnny Giles (Fox News – October 15, 2014)

http://www.foxnews.com/?intcmp=logo

APPALACHIA, Va. – Roger Whited doesn’t have to think back too far to remember when Main Street was alive with bustling shops and offices, teeming sidewalks and even traffic jams, all thanks to the industry that was the lifeblood of this tiny mountain town and countless others like it.

But six years into what many term the Obama administration’s “War on Coal,” Appalachia’s main thoroughfare is a tableau of boarded-up buildings, empty storefronts and dilapidated homes. Those who still mill about on streetcorners are looking for jobs, not places to spend their paychecks.

“I remember when the downtown area was more vibrant — streets were packed and businesses were open,” said Whited, who teaches high school social studies in Wise County. “There was the hotel and Bessie’s Diner, which was a popular place to get a meal. There were several other restaurants, but now the only place that serves food is a gas station.”

For generations, coal powered not only Appalachia’s homes and the lights on Main Street, but also the local economy. The salaries paid by companies like Cumberland River Coal Co. were enough to afford the trappings of a middle class, if hard-won, lifestyle. Men and women who toiled in the mines spent their money downtown and sent their kids to the local schools.

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RPT-Australia’s coal sector defies all comers to keep on mining – by James Regan (Reuters India – October 14, 2014)

http://in.reuters.com/

SYDNEY, Oct 10 (Reuters) – Australian coal output is hitting record highs and producers are pressing on with plans to open new mines, defying prices at five-year lows, environmental opposition and trade restrictions imposed by some of the country’s most important foreign buyers.

China, the world’s top coal importer, on Thursday announced it would impose import tariffs to help ailing domestic miners who have been hit by rising costs and plunging prices.

Glencore Plc, one of Australia’s biggest miners, estimates up to a third of Australia’s coal sector is running at a loss, yet collieries are flooding countries such as China and Japan with million of tonnes of coking coal used to make steel and thermal coal to generate power.

In many cases miners are finding it cheaper to run in the red than shut owing to so-called “take or pay” contracts that require payment of haulage fees whether or not any coal is shipped.

The fees were last set in 2009, when coal prices were much higher and still providing healthy profit margins. “Now it simply costs more to mine and ship the coal than we can sell it for,” said an executive at a mid-sized coal company who did not want to be named because of the sensitive nature of his company’s running costs.

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Union Miners Rally At EPA To Protest New Emissions Standards – by Kate Sheppard (Huffington Post – October 7, 2014)

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/politics/

WASHINGTON — The United Mine Workers of America came to Washington on Tuesday with a message for the Obama administration: We will not be forgotten.

The union miners, who came by bus from Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia, held a rally outside the Environmental Protection Agency’s headquarters in protest of new regulations on greenhouse gas emissions from power plants that the agency proposed in June. The rules are part of the Obama administration’s plan to curb the greenhouse gas emissions that are causing the planet to heat up.

Members of the International Brotherhood of Boilermakers and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers also attended the rally.

“We are fighting for our livelihood,” James Gibbs, an at-large vice president at UMWA, told the crowd. “We have to let the president know, we need to let both parties know that we will support candidates that support us.”

Organizers said about 700 people made it to Washington for the protest, and another 50 or so were on a bus that arrived late. They carried signs that read “EPA Rules Destroy Good Jobs” and “EPA Rules Put Seniors At Risk,” and some wore shirts that said “Stop The War On Coal.” UMWA leaders expressed frustration that the union had worked on behalf of progressive causes like improved labor laws and fair wages, and had committed money and manpower to elect Obama in 2008. (The group did not endorse either candidate in 2012.)

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Australian National University dumps mining stocks as global ‘divestment campaign’ focused on universities starts to gain traction in Australia – by Babs McHugh (Australian Broadcasting Corporation Rural – October 7, 2014)

http://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/

A global campaign to get funds and investors to sell their shares in fossil fuels appears to be gaining traction in Australia. There have been announcements by religious, educational and super funds on so called ‘divestment’ of these stocks in recent days.

Over the weekend the Anglican Diocese of Perth decided to sell shares and holdings it has in fossil fuel companies. Bishop Tom Wilmott, who is also the chair of the Anglican Eco Commission, says it plans to put funding into renewable energy investments instead.

“I’m not a financial person, I’m not an accountant, I’m a Bishop and it is for the trustees themselves to determine if they will move from fossil fuel exposed industries and shares into renewables.

“But just take for example the return on coal; over the last two years coal has gone from $125 a tonne to $65, and in the international market the smart money is moving into renewables as well.

“Two weeks ago the Rockefeller family announced they were moving out of petroleum into renewables. Now when a big organisation like that moves from fossil fuels to renewables, you can see where the direction is.”

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Indian coal import growth outstrips China – by Neil Hume (Financial Times – October 6, 2014)

http://www.ft.com/intl/commodities-note

Domestic supply growth is weak and unlikely to improve soon

Could India soon overtake China as the world’s biggest consumer of seaborne thermal coal? For many miners and traders, the answer to that question, posed at the Financial Times’ inaugural Commodities Retreat in Singapore last week, is yes.

Coal is India’s most important energy source – supplying more than half of all power stations – and the country, alongside Korea, is emerging as one of the few bright spots in the 1bn tonne a year seaborne thermal coal industry.

In the wake of adverse legal rulings – the Supreme Court recently cancelled more than 200 coal licences held by dozens of private sector groups – miners and traders are tipping strong import growth from India. They say domestic supply growth is weak and unlikely to improve in the foreseeable future because of bureaucratic and infrastructure challenges.

Glencore, the world’s largest producer of high quality thermal coal, told analysts on a recent site visit that it expects Indian annual imports to rise from 150m tonnes, to 180m tonnes in 2015 and 300m tonnes by 2020.

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Canadian coal mine Grande Cache sold for US$2 amid plunging bulk commodities demand – by Peter Koven (National Post – October 2, 2014)

The National Post is Canada’s second largest national paper.

The value destruction in the bulk commodities business has been astounding in the last few years and no one knows it better than Asian commodity traders Marubeni Corp. and Winsway Enterprises Holdings Ltd.

Back in 2011, they teamed up to buy Canadian miner Grande Cache Coal Corp. for $1-billion. Grande Cache was the only pure-play coal producer left in Western Canada, and the buyers saw an opportunity to secure a big source of supply in a mining-friendly country.

It turns out not to have been such a wise decision. Marubeni and Winsway are now planning to sell their Grande Cache stakes to an Asian coal firm called Up Energy. Unfortunately for their shareholders, the proposed sale price is a bit less than they paid: US$1. Each.

In a coal market as bad as this one, US$2 may not be such a bargain given the problems the buyer is inheriting.

“When you buy a coal company today, the cash outflows don’t stop when you close the deal,” said George Dethlefsen, chief executive of Corsa Coal Corp. “Even if the buyer is paying a dollar, they may need a good amount of money in reserve to sustain the company over the next 12 to 24 months.”

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RPT-UPDATE 2-New rules to slash Indonesian coal exports in short term at least – by Wilda Asmarini and Yayat Supriatna (Reuters India – October 1, 2014)

http://in.reuters.com/

JAKARTA, Sept 30 (Reuters) – Indonesia’s coal exports are expected to fall by between 15 and 20 percent in October from September and could decline 5 percent this year as firms scramble to obtain government export permits to comply with new rules due to come into effect on Oct. 1.

The new regulations, intended to stamp out illegal mining and ensure ample coal supplies for domestic power plants, require exporters to get approval from the mining and trade ministries.

But the industry says the rules are poorly timed and could push many firms out of business with coal prices at a five-year low. Unregistered firms will not be allowed to ship coal past the deadline.

Many miners and traders have encountered delays and a backlog of firms have yet to be registered, Pandu Sjahrir, chairman of the commercial committee at the Indonesian Coal Mining Association (ICMA), told Reuters.

“A lot of the backlog happens to be at the coal and minerals directorate level. Everything has to be done manually,” Sjahrir said, adding that firms needed to obtain the signature of each director at the department.

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