Coal
U.S. Coal Production At Its Lowest Level Since 1986
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U.S. coal production in 2015 was lower than it has been in nearly 30 years, according to a report released by the Energy Information Administration today.
Inside Energy (https://insideenergy.org/tag/powder-river-basin/page/2/)
U.S. coal production in 2015 was lower than it has been in nearly 30 years, according to a report released by the Energy Information Administration today.
As Arch Coal’s financial health continues to decline, Western landowner groups are raising concerns about the company’s ability to clean up its mines in the future.
As part of a series of listening sessions held across the country, representatives from the Bureau of Land Management recently came to Gillette, Wyo., to meet with residents about the agency’s federal coal program. The meeting quickly turned into an impassioned discussion about the future of the coal industry. Janice Schneider, with the Department of the Interior, said the agency was looking for comments on “how the Bureau of Land Management can best manage its coal resources.” The other issue was whether or not the BLM should charge coal companies higher royalties for coal mined on federal land. Independent studies have found that coal companies may not be charged enough for federal coal.
While the coal industry in other parts of the country has fallen on hard times, the mines of the Powder River Basin, in Wyoming and Montana, have been left largely unscathed. Even with new regulations that could put a dent in coal production from the region, the towns that depend on it aren’t given up on their black gold anytime soon.
As the Appalachian coal industry has disappeared, coal has moved west, to the Powder River Basin of Wyoming. That state now produces 40 percent of the nation’s coal and that production has left an impact on the land.
Horizontal drilling and fracking have prompted an oil boom in Wyoming’s Powder River Basin, Alisa Barba reported earlier this week. But an increase in drilling — 590 oil wells have been drilled and completed in the Powder River Basin since January of 2009 — has its consequences. Mead Gruver from Associated Press reported yesterday that 2014 has already been the state’s worst year for oil spills since 2009.
With temperatures dropping across the northern United States, power plants would usually be stockpiling coal in preparation for higher electricity demand during the winter months, but this year, that’s proving problematic.
Fracking has led to a huge upswing in oil production in Wyoming’s Powder River Basin, according to a new report by the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
Signs of the boom are easy to spot on Wyoming Highway 59 outside of Douglas. It’s not North Dakota, but as I sat in traffic for 15 minutes on a recent afternoon, waiting on road construction, it wasn’t hard to imagine that it could someday resemble it. Industry analysts think so too.