Meet the Face of President Trump’s End to Obama’s War on Coal: Third Generation Pennsylvania Miner
Coal miners gather outside of the mine shaft at the Acosta Deep Mine in Somerset County, PA.
The sun finally came out after a drenching rain storm in Pennsylvania’s Alleghany Mountain country on the first day of the work week. It marked a symbolic development for the coal miners whose future is brighter thanks to President Donald Trump’s efforts to revive an industry that the Obama administration had promised to all but abolish.
For Joey Kostya, that means he can continue a family tradition.
“My father and my grandfather before me were miners,” Kostya said after emerging from a shaft of the mine that broke ground just recently and was celebrated by Trump with Corsa Coal Corporation officials and other dignitaries overlooking the pit that reveals the rich vein of coal that runs beneath the rolling hills.
“I’m absolutely thrilled to be speaking with you on this great, great day,” Trump said via video. “The miners of Pennsylvania are mining coal again.
“Washington may be 180 miles down the road, but I want you to know each and every day, I’m fighting for you and all the forgotten men and women of America,” Trump said.
Kostya told Breitbart News that he thinks there’s a future in coal now and he’s glad to keep his job working in the mines.
“I like everything about it,” Kostya said. “It’s a fun job.”
“Something different every day so it keeps it interesting” Kostya continued before donning his working gloves again and heading back into the mine.
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President Trump Enables More Coal Mining Jobs
President Trump in Coal Country
A year ago, tempting investment in Wyoming coal was little more than a dream. Now, a group of investors plans to raise $80 million to build a coal treatment facility in the Powder River Basin that they say would increase the value of local coal.
The idea to treat and dry Powder River Basin coal so that it burns hotter and increases in value has been around for years, but the developers of Clean Coal Technologies claim to have perfected the method so that the coal doesn’t spontaneously combust or immediately reabsorb moisture from the air.
The Wyoming facility would be the first commercial plant employing Clean Coal’s technology, which was modeled and tested at a site in Oklahoma. Details such as location and number of jobs were not available by press time Monday.
Wyoming New Energy Corp. signed an agreement to raise $80 million in debt financing with investment bank Piper Jaffray to build the 2 million-ton plant.
Wyoming coal is some of the cheapest in the country, one of its key selling points in the electricity market. Its downside, however, is that it burns cooler than its counterpart from places like Appalachia. The treatment would allow producers to increase the value of their coal, potentially making it enticing to foreign markets, leaders from Clean Coal Technologies have said in early interviews with the Star-Tribune.
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Clean Coal Part of Broad Fuel Portfolio
Our demand for electricity will continue to increase, notwithstanding improved energy efficiency. This is because we continue to find more and more uses for electricity, including our constantly increasing use of computers and other electronics and the greater number of electric vehicles on the road.
A responsible policy for generating this electricity must include diverse fuel sources. Currently, we are experiencing a big push for wind and solar, and although welcome from an environmental point of view, these are intermittent and can be relied on only to supplement more traditional and dependable sources of electricity.
We are currently heavily dependent on natural gas as a fuel, primarily because of its low price but also because it emits half the carbon when burned as does coal. As we see periodically, though, low prices are often temporary, which is why our fuel sources need to be diversified.
How does coal fit into this plan? New technology has basically eliminated particulate emissions, including harmful sulfur and mercury, from new coal plants, and since these plants are more efficient, less coal is needed for a given amount of energy. To complement this, we need to develop other new technologies to capture the carbon-dioxide emissions when coal is burned. In this way, we can have more diversified fuel sources, and, because of our huge domestic coal reserves, we will be more energy self-sufficient.
There is reason to be optimistic that new technology can result in clean coal. Consider what fracking and horizontal drilling have done for the oil and gas industry. Given the track record in the U.S. of researching and developing new technologies, if we put some resources into clean coal research, we should anticipate a substantial payoff.
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The Light They Will Not See
Look hard enough at politics and you will always find irony. That’s why it “makes strange bedfellows.”
Here’s one recent example. President Trump’s support for the coal industry, together with his regulatory re-set that helped to revive it, has inadvertently made coal a surrogate for him – a president the major media deeply dislikes.
This helps to explain why some appear eager to belittle the comeback in coal employment, coal mines and coal production that Trump promised. Whatever the president likes must be bad; whatever he aids must fail. The president has tied himself to a dying industry, they say. It’s the same “government-can’t-bring-them-back” narrative familiar to anyone who recalls the GM bailout.
Well, postpone the funeral. Coal has added about 2,000 direct jobs in the last year – 1,700 just since December 2016. Mines are expanding and new mines opening in Alabama, Colorado, Pennsylvania, Virginia and West Virginia. Year-to-date production is up about 50 million tons, rail loadings are climbing despite a mild winter, coal consumption for power generation was up 5.3 percent in March YTD [EIA “Electric Power Monthly”] and both prices and exports are expected to tick upwards this year.
Well, they say, coal will never return to its dominant position, a surreptitious way of pushing back the goalposts to ensure the Trump administration’s “failure.” But few if any in the industry claim it can regain the throne it held before the shale gas revolution.
This narrative conceals another, more disputable rationale. Saying irreversible market conditions ensured coal’s eventual collapse not only renders Trump’s assistance futile. It also exonerates Obama’s regulators of any blame for massive job losses and impoverished mining communities.
One recent piece in The Washington Post neatly reprised this death watch narrative by contrasting the slow growth in coal jobs with the rising numbers of fast food workers.
Comparing jobs that pay on average $84,000 a year plus good benefits to seasonable employment paying the minimum wage is silly. Would you illustrate the hollowing out of big-time journalism by contrasting the decline of editors at major dailies with the rising number of Uber/Lyft drivers?
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Coal and Quarry Miner Exchange Now a Formidable Partner of CoalZoom
Bill Reid
The monthly publication Coal and Quarry Miner Exchange was acquired by the publisher, Coal News, Inc. in October 2016 and the new website has been online since then. Coal and Quarry Miner Exchange continues to be the online go-to resource that operators and purchasing agents use to find the equipment and services that they need.
“There are some very positive signs in U.S. coal markets and considerable optimism,” said Bill Reid, president Coal News/CoalZoom. “The latest Energy Information forecast says that coal production will be up a whopping 17% in 2017 with exports up 58% to 72 million tons. We are thrilled to be working with Coal and Quarry Miner Exchange advertising partners as things grow from strength to strength in the coal industry.”
The last printed issue of Coal and Quarry Miner Exchange was the October 2016 issue. Readers are encouraged to sign up for the FREE newsletter. CoalZoom.com e-blasts are on Mondays and Fridays and CoalMinerExchange.com e-blasts are on Wednesdays.
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