Coal producers find themselves in a hard place

Thanks that is interesting I had not seen those, that is some serious change. Not quite as much in CO as I would hope but still a goot projection.


(also the new site does not automatically make imgs from png, so I made them inline for others to see easily)

 

Keep in mind Scott (as you probably know for your Chicago area) there are very large new plants coming on line to replace the shut downs. It will be interesting future to see how it goes, but for the moment nat gas is catching up from being under-utilized.

 

Patriot Coal (mentioned in the article), filed for bankruptcy earlier this month. My mom had some of their stock. Whoops.

I have some BTU (Peabody Energy) and have lost big time. It was a stock recommended by Cramer after the disaster in Japan. Unfortunately, it sure didn't work out.

 

The issue was the site had already wrapped your insert in "font" and color tags.. so the image was not valid url (with the other tags inside.. )

 

....another way to play the coal cos. is bonds.
They are paying in the range of 7-8% interest. I have a small amount but its down 12%.

 

the big push now is exporting the coal to some other country so they can burn it. sounds like a "breaking bad" proposition to me

 

Other than personal bias, I would recommend strongly against investing in coal unless it is a company that exports it.
NG is dirt cheap and has surprised many people with how quickly power companies are moving from coal to NG.
And it does not seem to just be a temporary situation with the advances in 'fraking'.
Scott, many thanks for the images, I had not seen those yet. The one showing planned shutdowns is especially interesting.

As for new coal plants. Even if they are being built, they are replacing much dirtier coal plants, so even that is somewhat helpful (although minimally).

 

Here is something about exports it in Time magazine.
Believe we here in East always exported coal, but apparently West coast exports are limited.
Aside from enviro issue, the whole issue of exports of fossil fuels is interesting. If we block exports, our energy costs are lower. But then that is sort of trade barrier imposed by gov't. I don't have the answer.

Why the Battle Over U.S. Coal Exports Is So Important | Ecocentric | TIME.com

 

Agreed adding end-of-pipe treatment does not help much. What would help is fundamental change to clean coal technology such as gasification, but it's costly, so it is hoped we will accept more end-of-pipe treatment as "clean coal". But I do not accept added end-of-pipe treatment as "Clean coal".

Keep in mind there was always excess nat gas power generation swing capacity, so the recent reduced coal use is not so much due to building new nat gas power plants, rather partly due to fuel flexibility shift that was always present in the system. The warm winter enhanced this effect. I presume we did not see too much of this shift in the past, since the ultilities are locked into long term coal supply contracts, but I guess if the cost of nat gas is low enough, utilities can justify opting out of contracts.