Coal – Page 94 – Republic of Mining

Coal prices turn off investors – by Amanda Saunders (Sydney Morning Herald – September 25, 2015)

September 25, 2015

http://www.smh.com.au/

First it was tobacco, then alcohol, gambling, then asbestos. Sugar might also be on the nose for investors. But right now it is hard to find a more loathed sector than coal.

Not only are the forces of environmentalists lining up against the commodity. But there seems to be no end in sight for depressed prices.

The gas industry turned rogue on their counterparts in coal a few months ago too, attacking the industry in a bid to position itself as a cleaner source of energy.

And in a fresh kick in the guts, news broke out from the United States on Friday that Chinese President Xi Jinping was preparing to announce a cap-and-trade scheme to curb emissions as part of a climate deal with the US, ahead of climate talks in Paris in December.

China is Australia’s biggest coal customer and as China and US face off in a climate change battle, the commodity is likely to be a victim.

Can Alberta go coal-free by 2025? – by Tyler Hamilton (Toronto Star – September 25, 2015)

September 25, 2015

The Toronto Star has the largest circulation in Canada. The paper has an enormous impact on federal and Ontario politics as well as shaping public opinion.

Alberta is a province that wears its fossil-fuel heritage with pride. But it’s taking aim at coal-fired electricity generation.

There may be no more power plants burning coal in Ontario, but it was only a decade ago that the province generated enough electricity from coal to supply three million households.

When the last coal-fired facility was closed in 2014, it capped the single-largest effort to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions in North America.

Now coal-dependent, Alberta is giving it a shot. It is something that would have been unthinkable less than a year ago in a province that wears its fossil-fuel heritage with pride. Depending on the plan, Alberta could set the stage for Canada to become virtually coal-free by 2030 – conceivably earlier.

BHP Billiton in climate caucus as China joins carbon war – by Matthew Stevens (Australian Financial Review – September 25, 2015)

September 25, 2015

http://www.afr.com/business/

BHP Billiton’s membership of a new coalition of high powered commerce with the lofty aim of assisting the transformation of emerging nations into low carbon economies says much about the gathering pressures of climate change on those who make money in the fossil fuel cycle and just as much about the Global Australian’s radically changed view of its place in the world.

BHP was formally invited to become a foundation member of an “energy transitions commission” in a letter to chief executive Andrew Mackenzie penned by Royal Dutch Shell boss Ben van Beurden.

The Shell initiative, which will be formally announced in Houston on Monday, has been made all the more timely by China’s confirmation that it is contemplating the imminent introduction of a cap-and-trade carbon trading scheme and of stricter limits on the level of public funding for “high carbon projects”.

This is patently a deeply worrying development for big coal. China’s economic development is powered by electricity and that means it sits front and centre to any and all the optimism that the miners can muster about the medium and long-term outlook for coal.

Papal fundamentalism – by Peter Foster (National Post – September 25, 2015)

September 25, 2015

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

John Boehner, speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, couldn’t stop tearing up. Although Boehner is famously lachrymose, his watery eyes symbolized that for U.S. Catholics, indeed for all Catholics, Pope Francis’ address to a joint session of Congress on Thursday was a matter of faith, hope and charity.

The Pope has become a Zelig-like figure onto which the faithful project all their best intentions and highest aspirations. He plays to the role, turning up at Congress in a super humble Fiat (He left Washington later in a super jumbo jet).

For the not quite so enchanted, Francis is less a symbol of universal love and goodwill than a figurehead who has become deeply involved on the wrong side of some of the most divisive and dangerous political issues of our day. The question for the more cynically-inclined is how far those involvements represent an attempt to divert attention from the ongoing problems of the Church itself, which is still beset by the reverberations of sexual and financial scandals.

The Pope does not fit into normal political categories. He is a hybrid of social conservatism and socialism, which made his speech an inevitable mixed bag, a platter of papal platitudes peppered with elements of controversy, some carefully-padded, some not.

COLUMN-Coal isn’t amazing – how to lose the PR war, and why it may not matter – by Clyde Russell (Reuters U.K. – September 24, 2015)

September 24, 2015

http://uk.reuters.com/

(Reuters) – – Can the coal industry win a public relations battle, and does it even matter if it can’t?

There’s no shortage of people and organisations claiming that coal is increasingly embattled and is about to go the way of whale oil and wood as a fuel of the past.

Does this mean that the Minerals Council of Australia’s new, and seemingly costly, campaign in support of the fuel is simply raging against the inevitable, or does it herald a new front in the war between coal miners and anti-coal environmentalists?

There’s little doubt that coal has an image problem, increasingly so in developed countries where the fuel’s major contribution to climate change is well-publicised and understood by the majority of the public.

One of the top producers has even gone so far as to say coal is on the losing side, and not just because prices have dropped by almost two-thirds in the current four-year losing streak.

NEWS RELEASE: Morgan Stanley Pressured to Drop Coal Financing

September 22, 2015

Rainforest Action Network Announces Campaign as Next Major Bank Targeted Since Bank of America Coal Milestone

San Francisco – Today, Rainforest Action Network (RAN)announced that Morgan Stanley is the next major investment bank being targeted with a public campaign to demand that the bank commit to stop financing coal mining and coal-fired power.

“Morgan Stanley has longstanding financing relationships withsome of the worst offenders from the global coal mining industry, including Peabody Energy, the world’s largest private sector coal mining company,” said Ben Collins, Senior Research and Policy Campaigner at RAN. “Last year alone, the bank financed $477 million for coal mining.”

Morgan Stanley continues to finance top producers of mountaintop removal coal, even as eleven of its competitors have committed to cut financing for the practice. The bank also financed $1.2 billion in 2014 for the largest operators of coal-fired power plants in the world such as RWE, Europe’s largest single emitter of carbon dioxide.

For fifteen years, RAN has been holding the U.S. banking sector accountable for its environmental and human rights impacts, most recently campaigning against Bank of America’s coal financing.

Pope Francis And Coal Country Catholics – by Dan Boyce (Inside Energy – September 20, 2015)

September 21, 2015

http://insideenergy.org/

Pope Francis is visiting the U.S, this week. On Thursday he will make a historic address to Congress.

Some conservative Catholics say Pope Francis is meddling in American politics with his recent encyclical on the environment, the biggest papal statement ever on the subject and one which included a call for action on climate change. Meanwhile, for the faithful in western coal country, he is raising moral questions.

Donna Zofcin’s husband was injured in a coal mining accident in Kentucky. He was paralyzed for a time, then doctors helped him walk again. He died a few years later, in 1992. Still, the walls of her humble Cheyenne, Wyoming home are an homage to coal, with framed watercolor prints of mining equipment. Living now in the country’s biggest coal state, that theme still runs through her life. So too, does her Catholic faith.

“Oh, we’re very devout,” Zofcin said of her and her family, “and we go to church every Sunday.”

Back in June, Wyoming’s State Bishop, Paul Etienne, delivered a special homily at Zofcin’s church in Cheyenne. The homily focused on the Pope’s headline grabbing encyclical. A challenging and bold teaching, Etienne said, which lines out humanity’s responsibility to be good stewards of the earth.

We’re losing the PR battle, says BHP coal boss – by Mark Ludlow (Australian Financial Review – September 18, 2015)

September 18, 2015

http://www.afr.com/business/mining/

Australia’s coal industry is losing the public relations battle against environmental activists who are trying to shut down fossil fuels, says BHP Billiton’s coal business president Mike Henry.

Despite plummeting international prices and the rise of renewable energy such as wind and solar, Mr Henry said Australia’s coal industry was not in terminal decline and the outlook for Australia’s thermal and metallurgical coal was strong.

“While the overall share of market share of coal may decline, the outright cost competitiveness of coal, as well as the substantial, existing base of installed infrastructure, means we can expect to see demand support for decades to come,” Mr Henry told an American Chamber of Commerce lunch in Brisbane on Friday.

“I am optimistic that the market will improve in the medium term. But poor returns, and little indication of better times on the immediate horizon, make coal a pretty challenging business at the present time.”

Is it the end of coal? – by Tracy Johnson (CBC News Business – September 17, 2015)

September 17, 2015

http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/

The coal industry meets in Vancouver today to talk survival in the midst of a deep downturn

At a glance, the Canadian Coal Conference kicking off in Vancouver today looks like any other corporate confab: A golf tournament, a hotel ballroom and a reception at an uptown restaurant are all on the agenda.

However, amid the pleasant trappings Canada’s coal industry will spend the next few days contemplating a frightening present that’s pointing toward an even more uncertain future.

Coal is facing a laundry list of challenges: reduced demand in Asia, prices at decade lows and environmental pressure in North America to stop burning the fossil fuel.

Max Wang is the chief executive of Grande Cache Coal. His company made headlines a year ago when it was sold for just $2 to Up Energy Group, based in China. Wang says that without that new ownership he’s not sure Grande Cache would have survived.

New Study: We’re Nowhere Near Peak Coal Use in China and India – by Frank Holmes (U.S. Global Investors – September 15, 2015)

September 16, 2015

http://www.usfunds.com/

Resource investors, take note: By 2025, just 10 years from now, energy consumption in Asia will increase a whopping 31 percent. A whole two-thirds of that demand, driven largely by China and India, will be for fossil fuels, most notably coal.

That’s according to a new research piece by financial services group Macquarie, which writes that the estimated rise in fossil fuel demand is equivalent of “three times Saudi Arabia’s current (all-time-high) oil production.”

Macquarie’s research is in line with BP’s “Energy Outlook 2035,” released earlier this year, which predicts that more than half of the world’s energy consumption will come from China and India by the year 2035.

Many readers might approach this news with a healthy dose of skepticism. Haven’t we been told that fossil fuels are falling out of favor? Aren’t governments placing caps on coal use to appease environmentalists and climate change crusaders?

It’s true that coal demand in China has declined a huge 6 percent so far in 2015, the result of anti-air pollution laws that temporarily restricted not just coal use but also factory operations and the amount of driving you can do.

Global coal benchmarks fall below 2009 crisis levels – by Henning Gloystein (Reuters U.S. – September 15, 2015)

September 15, 2015

http://www.reuters.com/

SINGAPORE, Sept 15 (Reuters) – Three leading global thermal coal price benchmarks have fallen below levels last seen during the global financial crisis of 2008-2009, knocked by a sharp slowdown in demand, especially in Asia, and with mining output remaining stubbornly high.

Europe’s Amsterdam-Rotterdam-Antwerp, Australia’s Newcastle and South Africa’s Richards Bay benchmarks have dropped to between $51 and $58 per tonne, or about 60 percent off their last peak in 2011 and 75 percent below all-time highs hit in 2008.

The unprecedented slump has been a contributing factor to miners such as BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto losing around half their share value since 2011.

The diversified firms are leading thermal, coking coal and iron ore producers and their shares have underperformed energy firms like oil-giant Exxon Mobil, whose stock has also been hit by tumbling crude prices.

‘Overburden’: Powerful New Film Doc Captures Big Coal’s Enduring Trauma — And Two Women’s Work to Heal Its Damage – by Jeff Biggers (Huffington Post – September 8, 2015)

September 9, 2015

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/

While recent headlines hastily declare the death of King Coal, a powerful new film documentary based on seven years of investigation poignantly captures the complexities and largely overlooked stories of the enduring trauma of the coal industry on miners, their families, affected neighbors and the ravaged communities and Appalachian mountains they call home.

As one of the most timely, poetic and informed film documentaries released this year, Overburden: Two Women and the Mountain Between Them, chronicles a quintessential American journey–amid the tragedy of lawlessness in the workplace and the environment–of two courageous women, formerly divided, who shed their fears and find common ground to begin the painful process of dealing with their grief, seeking terms of justice, and healing their damaged communities and mountains.

“We’ve all become family,” Betty, a once fervent pro-coal supporter tells Lorelei, a coal miner’s widow and vocal mountaintop removal mining organizer, in the film. “Don Blankenship has put us together,” she adds, referring to the notorious former Massey Energy CEO.

Nova Construction hopes to open Junction Road coal mine – by Richard Cuthbertson (CBC News Nova Scotia – September 9, 2015)

September 9, 2015

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/

Town once famous for mines could start supplying Nova Scotia Power

An industry that was once the economic lifeblood of Springhill, N.S., could soon return to the town, as an Antigonish company seeks the green light to sample 10,000 tonnes of coal starting as soon as early next year.

Springhill Coal Mines Ltd., a subsidiary of Nova Construction, wants to dig an open pit to pluck the coal from land it owns in the Junction Road area and ship it to Trenton to test as fuel in Nova Scotia Power’s generating station.

“We’re still a province that burns a lot of coal per year to generate electricity,” Nova Construction President Donald Chisholm told CBC News. “For a number of years to come, that’s probably going to remain the same.”

Springhill Coal Mines submitted an application to Nova Scotia Environment on July 27. At this point, the company is only applying to drill for test amounts and any move to open a full scale open pit mine would be subject to a fresh application and full environmental assessment.

Coal Companies Are Hurting. But the Coal Industry Is Not Dying. – by Daniel Gross (Slate.com – September 8, 2015)

September 8, 2015

http://www.slate.com/

Climate hawks must realize that bankruptcies aren’t the way to a lower-carbon future.

Climate hawks have been gleeful over the trend of big U.S. coal companies filing for bankruptcy. Patriot Coal filed for Chapter 11 in May, Walter Energy sought protection in July, and Alpha Natural Resources succumbed in August. And it makes sense: A financially unviable coal industry could be a big step in the movement toward a lower-carbon future.

A report this month by Taylor Kuykendall and Hira Fawad at SNL Energy found that roughly “10.4% of all the coal produced in the U.S.” in the second quarter of 2015 came from companies that have filed for bankruptcy protection. “In Central Appalachia, 37.5% of the coal mined in the quarter came from mines that were owned or operated by companies that have filed for bankruptcy since 2012,” they write.

But coal haters shouldn’t be too gleeful at this spate of bankruptcies. While some mines are being idled, they’re not being shuttered en masse. The financial failure of many coal companies, by itself, won’t necessarily bring about a low-carbon future—and for particularly Americans reasons.

Greenpeace India Says It Will Continue Environmental Campaign – by Nida Najar (New York Times – September 4, 2015)

September 4, 2015

http://www.nytimes.com/

NEW DELHI — Greenpeace India said on Friday that it would continue campaigning for clean air and against coal mining in protected forests in the country despite the government’s revoking its permission to receive foreign donations.

In an order canceling the group’s registration under the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act, the Ministry of Home Affairs said that Greenpeace had “prejudicially affected the economic interest of the state.” Greenpeace India learned of the cancellation on Thursday.

The government, led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has declared economic development a priority and has been cracking down on nongovernmental organizations like Greenpeace, whose work often runs counter to its aims.

“I think all along this is not about Greenpeace alone; this is about what’s happening to the space for dissent in India,” said Vinuta Gopal, the interim co-executive director of Greenpeace India. “The clampdown has not been just against us. It’s been against a number of NGOs.”

In April, the government suspended Greenpeace India’s registration for foreign funding and froze its bank accounts.