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New UserCoal Glut, Environmental Pushback Derail West Coast Port Plans
02 Aug 2016
Western coal producers once saw exports to Asia as their future. For many, that dream is fading.
A global glut has flooded overseas markets that were once expected to buy coal produced along a belt stretching from Utah to Montana that includes the Powder River Basin. The industry is also losing long-sought shipping outlets on the West Coast, where local communities have blocked construction of coal terminals amid concerns about climate change and pollution.
Out of seven West Coast export terminals proposed in the past five years—which combined could have handled over 125 million tons of coal annually—not one has opened.
The coal companies’ defeats—under pressure from environmental groups—show the limits of miners’ sway over authorities as cheaper natural gas and tighter emissions standards have slashed demand for the fuel. With three of the four largest U.S. producers in bankruptcy and others hampered by debt, the retrenchment has been swift.
“It looks discouraging,” said Oystein Mathisen, president of Frontier International Shipping Corp., a ship brokerage. Mr. Mathisen is abandoning plans to hire staff and charter more ships to carry coal to China, Japan and Korea. “The lobbying against it is very strong. And politically it’s nothing popular at all.”
Late last month, the city council in Oakland, Calif., gave final approval to a rule blocking coal exports through a new terminal on a decommissioned army base. The future of the $500 million project—backed in part by $53 million of Utah tax revenues—is uncertain, according to a spokesman for the Oakland Global Trade and Logistics Center project.
Source: WSJ