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CSX looks to cut back in coal country
Thank you to our “job creating” president.
Does this mean CSX will abandon coal branches even though there is still coal out there, or will they just take the lines out of service, but allow the rail and ties to stay in place in case it is needed again someday?
Yeah thanks. What I hate the most, it seems to happen right before the holidays and it is hard to explain to the little ones there won’t be much of a Christmas. Maybe the pres would like to come down to W.V. and explain it to all the 3 and 4 year olds how this is good for them. I’m sorry to be so negative, but enough is enough.
I knew someone would blame the President. Market forces are responsible for relegating coal to a dying industry. Many more jobs were lost and lives ruined under W and Cheney.
The demise of “King Coal” is a function of a hostile administration. Surely, CSX won’t follow past practices of ripping these tracks out. With an administration that embraces capitalism and jobs coal will return. Natural gas is competitive…But the fear of more crippling coal regulations, not price, forces utilities to switch. There lies the problem.
So lower natural gas prices have nothing to do with this?
Yeah, it is Obama and his retarded initiatives for “clean energy” which is just a nice way of saying we are going to waste more money and put Americans (including railroaders) out of work. Natural gas prices will go back up and coal will be back. I’m betting these lines will just be mothballed, not abandoned possibly even short-term leases to another operator.
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How is any president responsible? Please please give a civics class so I can understand. I sincerely mean that.
Both cheap natural gas and EPA policies contributed to this. It isn’t just one or the other.
Britt, are you going to host it ??? I guess B.H.O.'s E.P.A. hasn’t anything to do with power plant closings. I sincerely mean that.
I thought railroaders and reader of Trains magazine were in favor of capitalism and free enterprise. Since natural gas and other energy sources are a less expensive source of energy, why should power plants continue to burn more expensive and dirty coal. Simple dollars and cents, not President Obama.
Coal has been declining since the end of World War II. Of course, that’s Obama’s fault.
OMG! coal is done and won’t be back. It’s called global warming. Also take note of how Japan generates electricity.
Fukushima?
Coal declining since WW2? That is a very false and incorrect statement. At the end of WW2, coal production in the US stood at about 600 million tons a year, a record at that time. However, production dropped some in the 1950s and then grew steadily to about 1,150 million tons in 2000. It then held steady until 2010 and then has dropped to about 900 million tons since.
Much of the growth in the 1970s and 1980s was due to the US Department of Energy and other Federal agencies under the Carter administration pushing power plants to burn coal as they said that the supply of natural gas would end by 2000, a very wrong forecast. Exports of the cleaner US coal also grew, peaking about 2010.
During the past few years, natural gas is lower in cost due to all of that non-existing gas now being in record supply. However, in many cases, the cost savings is not enough to change the formerly coal-burning plants to burn coal (a very expensive project), although some plants were made to be converted since they were originally natural gas sourced or located where natural gas existed and electric utilities hoped to be able to burn it. However, the heavy increase in environmental regulations and their costs have forced a number of electric companies to close coal-burning plants, or to convert them to natural gas. With these plants approaching 30 to 40 years of age, making major changes can be very expensive and remove them from the grandfather rules that currently operate under. However, some of the new proposed EPA regulations would even make natural gas too polluting to comply.
A final issue in the east is that the easy coal has mostly been mined and the eastern coal companies have a hard time competing against the lower cost of the large strip mines in the west.
Anybody who doesn’t think that Obama has anything to do with the decline in coal production needs to have his/her head candled. He has admitted as such. Natural gas may be cheaper now but once the use of coal has been diminished then the price will start to rise again as will oil. Once gas prices reach $8-$9 per gallon and home heating oil is in the $10 range maybe you’ll start to believe it. Global warming is an incredibly expensive hoax that will be a yoke around the neck of Americans for many years to come. Obama and is ilk are saddling your children and grandchildren with huge debts to pay for his silly energy policies for something that is a natural occurence. The only way this country will solve its energy needs is through clean coal and nuclear power. This country will not start to even begin to recover until this idiot is out of the White House. I do agree with Dr. Jennings last paragraph but that isn’t a large part of the problem.
Two things, China has drastically cut the amount of both types of coal they have been importing recently and secondly, it will be decades before the price of natural gas rises again, as vast deposits are continuing to be found day in and day out…as for it being to expensive to refit existing coal fired power plants…I believe the CEO of Southern Co.(a southern utility) would beg to differ(yes, I own stock in it, and the company has for years stated that the cost of retrofitting existing coal fired power plants is not prohibitive as long as the price of natural gas doesn’t dip to low, which it now has).
When you control water and air, like Obama’s EPA, you can target and cripple any industry or enterprise.