Twitter
Boston-Bay-Mines-Announcement

Coal

Alberta to audit coal mines to ensure there’s money for cleanup – by Tracy Johnson (CBC News Calgary – July 28, 2016)

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/

Companies must post a deposit, but it may fall short of the actual cost of reclamation

As Alberta moves away from coal-fired electricity, the provincial government is trying to ensure it will not be on the hook to clean up old coal mines once they stop operating. The Alberta Energy Regulator is planning to audit nine coal mines beginning by mid-September to ensure that each operator has the security on hand to reclaim the property.

The AER said it is looking for a contractor to “validate that the approval holder’s … security deposit is sufficient for the liability cost of suspension, decommissioning, remediation, monitoring and surface reclamation,” according to a request for proposal posted this month.

In its climate change plan released last November, the provincial government said it will no longer be dependent on coal-fired power by 2030. That means several plants will be shut down many years before their operators had planned.

Read more

This U.S. Coal Miner’s Getting Paid to Buy Assets in Appalachia -by Tim Loh (Bloomberg News – July 25, 2016)

http://www.bloomberg.com/

James Booth has done it again. In September, his Booth Energy coal group bought a collection of Appalachian mines from a Florida utility company for nothing beyond liabilities. On Monday, it acquired another two sites in West Virginia — this time, from Consol Energy Inc. — for nothing beyond liabilities.

In fact, Consol will pay a Booth Energy unit $27 million at closing and $17 million more over four years, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing on Monday. Such is the state of U.S. coal markets that Consol, looking to expedite its transition from mining coal to exclusively producing natural gas, is willing to part with non-core assets for, well, nothing.

For Booth and others, coal’s bust is yielding bargains. Last winter, West Virginia’s Jim Justice paid $5 million — and assumed liabilities — to buy back mines he’d previously sold for $568 million.

Read more

Coal Mine Disaster: An International Perspective – by John Kinnear (Crowsnest Pass – July 20, 2016)

http://passherald.ca/

A special committee in Sparwood is now hard at work planning the commemoration of the last major mine disaster to occur in the Crowsnest Pass/Elk Valley area. Like Hillcrest, this will be a major effort next spring to permanently acknowledge the loss of those fifteen men at Balmer North on April 3, 1967 and also every coal miner ever lost in the Michel/Natal area.

As far as disasters go the 1914 Hillcrest Disaster stands as the date in Canadian history when the worst loss of life in a coal mine occurred. But Canada is not alone in this regard; when it comes to tragic mining losses our numbers pale in comparison when one looks worldwide. This comparison was a painful one to research but will help the reader put our losses into an international perspective.

On April 26, 1942 the world’s worst underground mine disaster happened in Japanese-occupied Manchuria when 1,549 Chinese miners died at the Benxihu Colliery.

Read more

‘King Coal’ mining mogul Richard Budge dies aged 69 (Wakefield Express – July 18, 2016)

http://www.wakefieldexpress.co.uk/

Richard Budge, the businessman who was crowned “King Coal” after successfully spear-heading the purchase of State-owned British Coal’s mining assets when the industry was privatised over 20 years ago, died today (Monday) at the age of 69. Mr Budge was born in 1947, the year the UK coal industry, with almost a thousand deep mines and a million employees, was nationalised and became the National Coal Board.

Almost half a century later when the “ultimate privatisation” was completed, there were just 19 deep mines in production – and Mr Budge’s Doncaster-based RJB Mining company bought all but two of them.

The three English coalfield packages embracing 17 deep mines, 30 surface mines, over 400 million tonnes of reserves and nearly 50,000 acres of land, cost RJB Mining, of which Budge was Chief Executive, £815 million. Some £700 million was paid to the government on completion on December 30, 1994, and the remaining bank acquisition debt was paid off within two years.

Read more

The End of Coal – by R.F. Hemphill (Huffington Post – July 13, 2016)

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/

R.F. Hemphill is a Global Executive; Solar Power Expert; World Traveler and Author.

Presidential candidate Hilary Clinton is not an energy expert. She probably has some such person on her campaign staff, but she didn’t need them when she told the unfortunate truth to a West Virginia audience. She said, “We’re going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business.“

This occurred at a round table forum in March in Kentucky, hosted by CNN. The statement was made in the context of proposing to replace these jobs with renewable energy jobs, and was not made as a policy prescription, more as a statement of fact.

Was she right? What is the future of coal in the US, and more broadly in the world?

It is not easy to make a case for the coal mining (and burning) industry.

Read more

Poland to spend on boosting its image, defending coal industry (Reuters U.S. – July 13, 2016)

http://www.reuters.com/

Poland’s state-controlled firms will pay $25 million per year to finance a foundation aimed at bolstering its reputation abroad, Treasury Minister Dawid Jackiewicz said on Wednesday.

He said one of the foundation’s tasks will be to defend Poland’s coal industry from European Union plans to curb carbon emissions.

Since winning the first outright parliamentary majority since Poland’s 1989 transition from communism, the Law and Justice (PiS) party has overhauled the rules governing the constitutional court, prompting the EU executive to launch an unprecedented inquiry in January into whether the party has weakened the rule of law — a notion PiS mostly rejects.

Read more

India’s coal mining ambition hurts indigenous group, Amnesty says – by Rina Chandran (Reuters India – July 13, 2016)

http://in.reuters.com/

MUMBAI (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – India’s drive to ramp up coal output to meet growing energy needs has resulted in members of the Adivasi tribe being displaced from their ancestral lands and forced to wait years to be resettled, Amnesty International said on Wednesday.

The global human rights group said the Adivasi had suffered disproportionately from India’s push for coal. One in six of the 87,000 Indians who have been displaced over the past 40 years by state-owned Coal India Ltd (CIL) is Adivasi, Amnesty said.

Laws to protect vulnerable communities such as indigenous groups are poorly implemented and regularly flouted, it said. “Adivasi communities, who traditionally have strong links to land and forests, have suffered disproportionately from development-induced displacement and environmental destruction in India,” Amnesty said in a report.

Read more

Poland’s disappearing lakes fuel battle over coal mining – by Claudia Ciobanu (Reuters U.S. – July 10, 2016)

http://www.reuters.com/

WILCZYN, Poland (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – In early summer, the Wielkopolska region in western Poland looks like a scene from “The Hobbit” with intense green fields and lakes surrounded by dense forest and pretty cottages.

But there is growing disquiet in this rural idyll with more and more summer houses up for sale and farmers battling arid land and crop losses amid escalating protests about the impact of lignite coal mining in the area.

Residents ranging from fishermen and farmers to mayors and small business owners say water in the region’s lake system is disappearing, drying out farmland and jeopardizing the region’s economic base in agriculture and, more recently, tourism.

Read more

Federal judge rules against Wishbone Hill mine prospect – by Alex DeMarban (Alaska Dispatch News – July 9, 2016)

http://www.adn.com/

A federal judge has dealt a blow to an Alaska mining operator hoping to extract coal from the Wishbone Hill prospect near Palmer, ordering a federal agency to revisit a 2014 decision that allowed Usibelli to hold onto its 25-year-old permit though development had not occurred in a timely manner.

State officials said the next step is an administrative process by the Office of Surface Mining and Reclamation and Enforcement that could determine the validity of the permit. Conservation groups involved in the lawsuit said the next logical step will be a cessation order stopping the project because the company has no valid permit.

“The Office of Surface Mining will have to issue a cessation unless the state finds new evidence that mining happened within the proper time frame,” said Katie Strong, staff attorney at Trustees for Alaska, which represented conservation groups in the case. “But the state and Usibelli said no mining started until June 2010, so there aren’t circumstances here that will cause the permits to still be valid.”

Read more

Deutsche Bank Pulls Back from Deals in Coal Mining Sector – by Michael Corkery and Clifford Krauss (New York Times – July 7, 2016)

http://www.nytimes.com/

Pressured by environmentalists and worried about big losses from a troubled industry, many large banks and other lenders have made a hasty retreat from coal mining in recent years.

But even in these dark times, there was one bank that many coal miners could still count on for financing and advice: Deutsche Bank. Not any longer. The German banking giant is pulling back from the embattled coal sector, another sign of the increasing risks for banks that finance industries that contribute to climate change.

Last week, six senior members of Deutsche Bank’s metals and mining investment banking team, which was responsible for overseeing deals in the coal industry, said they were decamping for Jefferies, a smaller, scrappy New York investment bank that has a knack for scooping up investment bankers who increasingly feel out of place at larger, more heavily scrutinized global banks.

Read more

‘Fireflies In The Abyss’ Is A Sobering Look At The Lives Of Meghalaya Coal Miners – by Suprateek Chatterjee (HuffPost India – July 7, 2016)

http://www.huffingtonpost.in/

Filmmaker Chandrashekhar Reddy recalls the first time he stepped inside a coal mining pit. It was in mid-2012, near Lad Rymbai, Meghalaya. It was pitch-black, of course, and he could feel the oxygen levels falling as he descended down a slippery wooden ladder, terrified that he might fall off.

When he got to the bottom, he realised he lacked the flexibility to actually navigate the tunnels, the so-called ‘rat holes’, which are barely big enough for a fully grown adult to crawl through. “I had to be put in a cart and wheeled around in turns by some of the other men working there,” he said, in a conversation with HuffPost India.
“Despite the lack of oxygen, I saw some of them smoking in there, which, from my knowledge, is quite dangerous, as every mining activity results in the release of methane, which is flammable.”

Read more

Galt No. 6 coal mine in Lethbridge designated as historic site – by Ayesha Clough (CBC News Calgary – July 6, 2016)

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/

A remnant of Lethbridge’s mining past will be preserved in a new park after city council designated the Galt Mine No. 6 site as a Municipal Historic Resource.

Not much remains of the mine shaft that closed more than 80 years ago, aside from the boiler hoist base, tipple foundation and drift tunnel — but that’s not stopping the project.

“The fact there’s not a lot there [is] actually giving us more opportunities,” says Belinda Crowson, president of the Lethbridge Historical Society. “In my mind, ruins and holographic material … you could have an amazing display there of what the buildings used to look like.”

Read more

Rio Tinto sells coal mine for less than a cup of coffee – by Jamie Smyth (Financial Times – July 4, 2016)

https://next.ft.com/

Latest cut-price sale of an Australian asset in the troubled coal sector

Sydney – Rio Tinto is selling its interest in an Australian coal mine for A$1 (US$0.75) — the latest transaction in the troubled coal sector agreed for less than the price of a cup of coffee.

The Anglo-Australian miner said on Monday it was in discussions with Terracom, an Australia-listed junior miner, over its joint venture interest in the mothballed Blair Athol thermal coal mine in Queensland.

The proposed sale follows Rio’s decision to relinquish its stake in a Papua New Guinea copper mine last week, as part of a strategy of shedding non-core assets being pursued by Jean-Sébastien Jacques, Rio’s new chief executive.

Read more

Indonesia faces environmental time bomb after coal bust – by Fergus Jensen (Reuters U.S. – June 29, 2016)

http://www.reuters.com/

SAMARINDA, INDONESIA – Thousands of mines are closing in Indonesia’s tropical coal belt as prices languish and seams run dry. But almost none of the companies have paid their share of billions of dollars owed to repair the badly scarred landscape they have left behind.

Abandoned mine pits dot the bare, treeless hillsides in Samarinda, the capital of East Kalimantan province on Indonesia’s part of Borneo island. It is ground zero for a coal boom that made Indonesia the world’s biggest exporter of the mineral that fuels power plants. Abandoned mining pits have now become death traps for children who swim in them, and their acidic water is killing nearby rice paddies.

Indonesia has tried, mostly in vain, to get mining companies to keep their promises to clean up the ravaged landscape. But it doesn’t even have basic data on who holds the many thousands of mining licenses that were handed out during the boom days, officials say.

Read more

Coal Companies Spent $95 Million on Lobbying Before Bankruptcies – by Jennifer A Dlouhy (Bloomberg News – June 28, 2016)

http://www.bloomberg.com/

Five coal-mining companies spent $95 million to lobby U.S. lawmakers and more than half a billion dollars on salaries for top executives in the decade before they filed for bankruptcy, according to a report by an environmental group.

At the same time, the companies — Walter Energy Inc., Patriot Coal Corp., Alpha Natural Resources Inc., Arch Coal Inc. and Peabody Energy Corp. — benefited from a federal program that leases land for coal production at a discount. The environmental group, the Western Values Project, said in a report to be released Tuesday that the companies’ “excessive” spending shows the leases helped lobbyists and executives, not the public.

The five companies filed for bankruptcy over the past 13 months after natural gas became cheaper than coal and regulatory costs increased. Coal supplied 24.6 percent of U.S. electricity in April, compared to nearly 50 percent a decade ago.

Read more