America is the Saudi Arabia of coal. 350 years worth of reserves and countless other opportunities to expand — many of which are right here in the Commonwealth.
Of course, the last 10 years have been absolute hell for those on the front lines. The Bristol Herald Courier has more:
“The only one I can remember like the one now was in the mid-50s,” said Harry Childress, who has worked in the mines his whole life and now is president of the Virginia Coal and Energy Alliance. “I remember my dad being out of work and looking for odd jobs and trying to provide for us. But it came back.
“Now, I don’t know.”
Here’s what he means by a bust: Southwest Virginia produces about half the coal it did 10 years ago.
How bad is it? Virginia produced 15.3 million tons of coal in 2014. A far cry from the days of Tennessee Ernie Ford.
In 2004, with 4,558 employees reported to the DMME, 30.2 million tons of coal were produced. Last year, there were 3,632 employees, and about half as much coal produced.
And, the number of mines operating in the state has steadily declined in the last decade — in 2004, there were 294, and in 2014, just 216.
I’ll spare you from cherry picking the post — you should really take a moment and read the entire thing, because this is excellent reporting from the BHC’s Allison Robinson Gibson; the sort of crack reporting you used to find in regional newspapers that you just can’t find nowadays. The one real takeaway?
Dougher said energy forecasts, drawn from sources like the U.S. Energy Administration, indicate there will be a relatively flat demand for oil in the next 20, 30 years, but an uptick in natural gas use, at the expense of coal, which is expected to make up a smaller share of the U.S. energy market during that time frame.
Still, she said, the country should take an all-of-the-above approach.
“Coal is in abundant supply and has given us reliable, affordable fuel for centuries,” she said. “And you can’t walk away from reliable, affordable fuel.”
Could not agree more. Nor could the thousands of coal miners and the thousands reliant upon them — families, small businesses, schools, deputies, and energy ratepayers.
