OK, you are going to have to forgive me for not knowing all of the details to this question. But, there is a reason I am practicing law rather than working for the equivalent position at BNSF . . . cleaning honeywells . . .
Anyway, I was told in a rail conference that UP/CSX has a train that takes coal from Utah in partial transit for its destination in Europe. If you sit and think about this, it is staggering. A coal shovel loads coal onto a dump truck that hauls it to a conveyor belt. Counting the gas it takes for workers to drive to work, run the coal shovel, the dump truck, and conveyor belt, there is already a considerable energy expenditure.
Then, the coal travels more than 2000 miles by train to an Atlantic port, where it is loaded onto a conveyor and then into a steam ship. It then crosses the Atlantic in a steamship and is unloaded onto a conveyor. Presumably it gets on another coal train, is hauled to another conveyor presumably several hundred miles away, and then is used at a power plant. Most of the employees who run all of these steps likely drive to work.
My question is, what is the ratio of BTUs to make this trip compared to the amount of BTUs in the coal? The answer to this might be “enough,” as evidenced by the fact that it is economic reality. But, especially with the weak dollar, one really has to wonder.
A tangential question, perhaps also reflective of the weak dollar, doesn’t Germany have some coal?
Well for some perspective, assuming Utah coal packs 9,000 BTU/lb (just a guess on my part, feel free to correct me), then a 10,000 ton unit coal train is hauling 180,000,000,000 BTU’s.
I may be off here, but every mine I’ve ever seen uses long distance conveyors to move the coal from the mine to the railcar loadout. Trucks would be incredibly inefficient, both in terms of fuel and in terms of paying the drivers.
All the coal mines in Utah are underground, and there are mighty few steamships in commercial bulk service these days, but that’s not your point. It is also common for western coal mines to be trucked some long distances from the mine to the rail loadout or to the power plant, often more than 200 miles. At various times there have been 400-mile truck hauls from Utah mines to cement and power pla
Wow, thank you. Having received such a great answer, I am going to push my luck to the second part of the question: with all of these steps involved, how can Utah coal compete with German/European coal?
I imagine the answer might be the same as the reason Saudi Arabian oil is shipped over here despite the presence of indingenous American oil. But, it seems to me that they would mine European mines dry before transporting coal half way around the world.