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Death Toll in Xinjiang Coal Mine Attack Climbs to 50 (Radio Free Asia – September 30, 2015)

http://www.rfa.org/english/

The death toll in a knife attack orchestrated by alleged “separatists” at a coal mine in northwestern China’s troubled Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region has climbed to at least 50 people—including five police officers—with as many as 50 injured, according to local security officials who say nine suspects are on the run.

The attack occurred on Sept. 18, when a group of knife-wielding suspects set upon security guards at the gate of the Sogan Colliery in Aksu (in Chinese, Akesu) prefecture’s Bay (Baicheng) county, before targeting the mine owner’s residence and a dormitory for workers.

When police officers arrived at the mine in Terek township to control the situation, the attackers rammed their vehicles using trucks loaded down with coal, sources said.

Three sources, including a ruling Communist Party cadre from a local township government, told RFA’s Uyghur Service in recent days that at least 50 people were killed and as many as 50 injured in the attack—with most casualties suffered by the mine’s largely majority Han Chinese workers.

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Coal threatens Poland’s image as European role-model – by Marcin Goettig (Reuters U.S. – October 1, 2015)

http://www.reuters.com/

WARSAW, Oct 1 (Reuters) – Coal mining has taken centre stage in the campaign for this month’s parliamentary election in Poland, an outsize political role that threatens the country’s hard-won economic growth and reputation in Europe.

Once a pillar of the communist-era economy, coal mines escaped the “shock therapy” that helped turn Poland into one of the European Union’s most resilient economies and a role-model for the rest of the bloc in investors’ eyes.

Successive governments have shrunk the sector, but kept it in state hands, conscious of public support for the miners, whose predecessors lost lives opposing martial law in 1981 and helped overthrow communism.

The mines have lost more than $850 million since the start of 2014 as coal prices slipped to decade lows, and efforts to prop them up have brought Poland into conflict with the European Union on both competition and environmental grounds.

The bloc wants to cut carbon dioxide emissions by at least 80 percent by 2050, and the highly polluting Polish hard coal sector will come under further scrutiny with the approach of talks on a global climate deal in late November.

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West Virginia Miners Play Second Fiddle to the Molly Maguires – by Mark Hand (Counter Punch.com – September 29, 2015)

http://www.counterpunch.org/

In search of improved working conditions and livable wages, mine workers in two major coal producing states resorted to violence against coal mine owners and managers. The militants in one of those states are celebrated as heroic fighters of America’s industrial age. In the other state, the miners’ campaign for human progress is omitted from state history books.

In Pennsylvania, the state contributed funds to build a monument to honor the Molly Maguires, a secretive Irish organization that allegedly killed coal company officials as retribution for their treatment of miners. In museums and gift shops in the state’s anthracite coal region, visitors can purchase t-shirts and other memorabilia honoring the Mollies, 20 of whom were hanged after they were found guilty of murder and other serious charges in the late 1870s.

A big-budget Hollywood movie, titled The Molly Maguires, was released in 1970 with a radical coal miner, played by Scottish actor Sean Connery, as the hero and a Pinkerton detective, played by Irish actor Richard Harris, as the anti-hero.

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BHP Billiton sees strong earnings growth even in low carbon world (Reuters U.S. – September 29, 2015)

http://www.reuters.com/

MELBOURNE – BHP Billiton, the world’s largest miner, said on Tuesday it sees its earnings doubling over the next 15 years, even in a world where carbon emissions are cut to limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius.

Under pressure from UK investors who fear fossil fuel assets could become worthless under tough climate policies, BHP released analyses of its copper, coal, oil, gas, potash, uranium and iron ore assets showing the company will hold up well under what it considers the most realistic scenarios.

Even with the 2 degrees C limit – equivalent to a rise of about 3.5 degrees Fahrenheit – that has been set for UN climate talks later this year, demand in 2030 for all of BHP’s commodities except thermal coal would be higher than in 2014.

Uranium would be the biggest winner as more nuclear power would be needed, BHP said. “In this scenario, our portfolio remains resilient, and our analysis indicates that margins remain strong and even increase in some commodities,” Chief Commercial Officer Dean Dalla Valle told reporters ahead of an investor briefing in London.

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Coal prices turn off investors – by Amanda Saunders (Sydney Morning Herald – 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.

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Can Alberta go coal-free by 2025? – by Tyler Hamilton (Toronto Star – 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.

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BHP Billiton in climate caucus as China joins carbon war – by Matthew Stevens (Australian Financial Review – 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.

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Papal fundamentalism – by Peter Foster (National Post – 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.

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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)

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.

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NEWS RELEASE: Morgan Stanley Pressured to Drop Coal Financing

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.

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

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We’re losing the PR battle, says BHP coal boss – by Mark Ludlow (Australian Financial Review – 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.”

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Is it the end of coal? – by Tracy Johnson (CBC News Business – 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.

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

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Edelman ends work with coal producers and climate change deniers – by Suzanne Goldenberg (The Guardian – September 15, 2015)

http://www.theguardian.com/

World’s biggest PR firm says high risk clients threaten its reputation, following criticism for its work on behalf of fossil fuel companies

The world’s biggest public relations company has decided it will no longer work with coal producers and climate change deniers. Edelman said it believes such clients pose a threat to the company’s legitimacy and its bottom line.

The exclusion of coal and climate denial, as well as fake front groups that oppose action on global warming, is outlined in internal communications obtained by the Guardian and confirmed by company executives. It signals an important shift in a company that reported earnings of $833m (£540m) and has played a critical role in shaping public opinion in the US and globally about climate change.

The new approach follows a two-year review of Edelman’s operations aimed at protecting what the company calls its “licence to lead”, following negative publicity about its work on behalf of the oil lobby and pipeline companies.

The conclusion was that coal producers and climate denial, as well as tactics such as greenwashing, were high-risk.

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