Might have used the hackneyed by now 'redux' but since we've overused the already, uh hackneyed term redux, let's just go with again.
Coal for export may come back to the US, out of the Columbia River, into the Pacific and off to Asia wherever.
Read on with crossed fingers. Coal isn't dead yet. We know that. But it might stand a shot with a defibrillator, or a jump start for met coal. But first things first. Railroaders, and railroad outfits are all for this. Big construction outfits are behind this, and coal producers are on board, as are shippers!
But EPA is the BIG wall. http://tdn.com/news/local/epa-calls-for-revised-coal-study-to-replace-inadequate-federal/article_392b1fdb-a6f0-548b-83df-cadf81f79ca5.html
Let's get going! Build it!
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Hmm. That address doesnt look right. It looks like the link pointing here was faulty.
Put down the bong. Finding customers is the big wall. How are they going to compete with Australia as anything but a fill-in supplier?
Where's the met coal going to come from?
Or, maybe, just maybe, this is one of those organized bankruptcy schemes? Everybody groupthink-thinks it up to "great" based on 2012 numbers. Somebody gets rich and a whole lot get poor.
Put down the bong. Finding customers is the big wall. How are they going to compete with Australia as anything but a fill-in supplier?
Where's the met coal going to come from?
Or, maybe, just maybe, this is one of those organized bankruptcy schemes? Everybody groupthink-thinks it up to "great" based on 2012 numbers. Somebody gets rich and a whole lot get poor.
Ain't smokin' dope, although we can do so legally in Or-ree-gon, while in Vagina you'll put everyrthing you own at risk, including your lyphe!
That aside, anthracite, or met-coal still is available where it had been all along, including when the US steel industry began its long decline when importing steel from 'overseas' competed for price directly...
That source? Huge reserves of anthracite coal in Eastern Pennsylvania. That region has been the exporter for nearly 100 years, out of choice. Still the best ever!
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Hmm. That address doesnt look right. It looks like the link pointing here was faulty.
In the United States, anthracite coal history began in 1790 in Pottsville, Pennsylvania, with the discovery of coal made by the hunter Necho Allen in what is now known as the Coal Region. Legend has it that Allen fell asleep at the base of Broad Mountain and woke to the sight of a large fire because his campfire had ignited an outcropping of anthracite coal. By 1795, an anthracite-fired iron furnace had been built on the Schuylkill River.
Anthracite was first experimentally burned as a residential heating fuel in the US on 11 February 1808, by Judge Jesse Fell in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, on an open grate in a fireplace. Anthracite differs from wood in that it needs a draft from the bottom, and Judge Fell proved with his grate design that it was a viable heating fuel.[citation needed]
In spring 1808, John and Abijah Smith shipped the first commercially mined load of anthracite down the Susquehanna River from Plymouth, Pennsylvania, marking the birth of commercial anthracite mining in the United States. From that first mine, production rose to an all-time high of over 100 million tons in 1917.[citation needed]
Anthracite usage was inhibited by the difficulty of igniting it. This was a particular concern in smelting iron using a blast furnace. With the invention of hot blast in 1828, which used waste heat to preheat combustion air, anthracite became a preferred fuel, accounting for 45% of US pig iron production within 15 years.[12] Anthracite for iron smelting was later displaced by coke.
From the late 19th century until the 1950s, anthracite was the most popular fuel for heating homes and other buildings in the northern US, until it was supplanted by oil burning systems and more recently natural gas systems. Many large public buildings, such as schools, were heated with anthracite-burning furnaces through the 1980s.
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Hmm. That address doesnt look right. It looks like the link pointing here was faulty.
From Scranton south to Reading. All along the routes of CNJ, Lehigh, Reading, DL&W, and a few shorties like D&HR, and others... All the smaller mines of that valley whose reserves ran out 35-50 years ago, a few are still producing the shit.
But yeah, Snippy's point isn't lost. The markets for anthracite. Where are they? The consumers of hard coal, met-coal, anthracite aren't domestic users for sure! But we're still mining hard coal, and shipping the stuff by rail anyway.
Carloads of anthracite travel in mixed trains, not unit trains like 2LARRCO and UP outa the Powder River. There's nothing likle that coming out of Eastern Pennsy lately, but it's going somewhere.
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Hmm. That address doesnt look right. It looks like the link pointing here was faulty.
Uh, met coal, as the term is used here, is not anthracite.
The dirt that would be headed your way isn't met coal. So now we have to figure out who is going to buy US coal exported through any Columbia River port.
When I was a kid we burned anthracite; called it hard coal. This was NW Pa. The mines in eastern PA were all very deep, and most of them are now abandoned and flooded. The good old days??????????
Interesting that the western coal terminus for the BNSF is actually in Canada so
which country makes the most money from all the "Powder River Black". Ships set
sail loaded with coal from Canada from the USA.
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If you are in a horror movie, you make bad decisions, its what you do.