If Trump wants to bring back coal

[miketx]

What the mining industry has left us will be a burden to the rest of us for many generations. And regulations are going to have to be made from now on concerning money being put in trust for cleanup.

LOL! You can't see it can you? The mining industry is fucked up because of all the regulations!

 

[Old Rocks]

Really? The people on the West Coast will have something to say about that.

The ones who are seceding?

What gives you that silly idea?

 

[miketx]

Really? The people on the West Coast will have something to say about that.

The ones who are seceding?

What gives you that silly idea?

That the fools said they were seceding?

 

[DOTR]

There will be uses for coal, but it will never be the powerhouse that it has been. In fact, many of the big coal companies are going out of business, for lack of demand. And, as usual with energy companies, we, the taxpayer, are getting stuck with the cleanup costs.

Mine environmental risk grows with bankruptcies in big coal


CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) — As more coal companies file for bankruptcy, it's increasingly likely that taxpayers will be stuck with the very high costs of preventing abandoned mines from becoming environmental disasters.

The question is not if, but when, where and how many more coal mines will close as the industry declines, analysts say. Many mines already operate at a loss, and there's not enough money in the fuel anymore to enable their owners to keep their promises to clean up the land.

"It's sort of a situation where nobody, really, is going to end up looking good," said James Stevenson, director of North American coal for analyst firm IHS. "The states have I think a significant risk — the federal government does as well."


This reclamation crisis looms because of a practice called self-bonding, which allows coal companies to promise to eventually cover the cost of cleaning up abandoned mines without first setting aside the necessary money.

Because of self-bonding, billions of dollars in legally required reclamation funding exist only as IOUs, without dedicated assets or bonds backed by third-party investors.

Nationwide, self-bonding in the coal-mining industry tops $3.3 billion. That includes $2.3 billion in IOUs that the three biggest bankrupt coal companies — Alpha Natural Resources, Arch Coal and Peabody — owe in five states, according to an Associated Press analysis of bonding obligations in the top 16 coal-mining states.

I wonder why they are going bankrupt? Hmmm...maybe the Kenyan in chief can explain...