Finally. Despite more than a year of research and writing on coal exports it wasn’t until yesterday that I saw my first loaded coal train. Here it is:
I snapped this photo while standing on Seattle’s Wall Street looking west toward the waterfront. Behind the coal train, you can see the Edgewater Hotel.
My first thought was should I stop breathing? Fortunately, coal dust was not visibly blowing off the tops of the coal cars. Unfortunately, however, the lopsided shape of the coal piles suggested that wind and rain had already taken their withdrawals somewhere along the tracks.
My second thought was: wow, global logistics are amazing. Although I think large-scale coal exports are a bad idea, there’s something undeniably gee-whiz about the path that coal was taking.
The coal almost certainly originated at the Spring Creek Mine, owned and operated by Cloud Peak Energy in southeastern Montana, not far from Sheridan, Wyoming. A few of the 230 workers there mined the coal using a “drag line open-pit” technique, similar to strip mining, that deploys a giant crane-like machine with a bucket for excavations. For a Powder River Basin deposit, the coal in my train was relatively high-energy and therefore relatively valuable. A typical pound of Spring Creek coal will yield an estimated 9,350 BTUs of heat when burned, about 9 percent more than average deposits in the Basin.
At the mine, the coal was loaded into open top hopper-style railcars on a BNSF train. If my train was a typical one, it was at least 100 cars long each of which carried perhaps 110 tons of coal. At the mine, the coal wasn’t worth much. Almost certainly priced at less than $15 per ton, the entire train’s worth of coal was worth less than $200,000 when it was loaded, though it would ultimately sell for much more than that in Asia.
After leaving the mine, the train took one of two main routes across Montana, either tracing a line through Great Falls-Whitefish-Libby (in yellow on the map) or through Bozeman-Helena-Missoula (in green on the map). In either case, the train arrived in Sandpoint, Idaho. From Sandpoint, it continued west to Spokane before traveling southwest to meet the Columbia River near Pasco. The train then turned west, rolling through the windy Columbia River Gorge to Vancouver, Washington where it turned north, paralleling Interstate 5 all the way to Seattle where I saw it on the waterfront. From Seattle it would continue north, passing through Everett and Bellingham and crossing the Canadian border at Blaine. Finally, it would turn west one last time and make its way to the Westshore Coal Terminal. All in all, it was a roughly 1,180 mile journey by rail.
By the time the coal reaches Westshore, it’s worth a lot more—in some sense. Figuring that shipping runs 1.5 cents per ton per mile, moving the coal from Wyoming to port in British Columbia adds costs of about $17.70 per ton, more than the coal was actually worth when it was mined.
In order to serve Westshore’s huge appetite for coal—the terminal may have exported as much as 25 million tons of coal in 2011—more than 1,800 trains like mine will arrive and depart in the course of a year. (The terminal itself puts the figure at closer to 2,200, which suggests smaller coal trains.) The vast majority of the coal arriving at Westshore, about 81 percent, comes from Canada; only about 19 percent of it takes the trip my coal did.
Once at Westshore, the train will be unloaded with a rather amazing piece of machinery called a “rotary dumper.” It will then be stockpiled, perhaps several times, using an even more amazing piece of equipment called a “stacker reclaimer.” Using a system of conveyor belts, the coal will eventually be loaded on an ocean-going vessel of huge proportions, likely a “Capesize” ship, the largest class of marine freighter.
Rotary railcar dumper, used to unload trains. Photo by Heyl & Patterson, inc, used under a creative commons license.
It’s here where we lose sight of the coal in my train. We don’t know exactly where it will end up. What I’ve sketched out below, however, constitutes a reasonable assumption.
The coal ship will cross 5,100 miles of the Pacific Ocean, eventually arriving in port at Shanghai. In China the coal will sell for perhaps somewhere between $60 and $120 per ton. But now the costs are driven not primarily by the cost of shipping it, but by market prices in eastern China. Altogether then, the coal that passed me by on the waterfront could well be worth more than a million dollars.
The coal will be unloaded in China and then shipped by truck or rail to one of the many coal-fired power plants that generates electricity for the growing mega-city. If it’s burned in a relatively modern plant the coal will generate perhaps 34,000 megawatt-hours of power. That’s roughly as much power as 3,000 typical American homes use in a year.
Unfortunately, the combusted coal will produce more than just electricity. It will also emit more than 27,000 tons of carbon dioxide, the planet-warming equivalent of 6,100 American cars in a typical year. It will also produce nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide, and mercury. Some of that mercury will drift back across the Pacific, settling in places like Mount Bachelor in Oregon or Lake Washington near my home in Seattle.
In 2011, Cloud Peak shipped around 4.7 million tons of coal from the Powder River Basin to markets in Asia. If the Gateway Pacific Terminal is approved at Cherry Point, coal companies could soon be moving more than ten times that amount, 48 million tons, through northwest Washington. And if the Millennium Bulk Terminals project is approved in Longview, coal companies could soon be moving an additional 44 million tons of coal out of southwest Washington. And if the Port Westward and Morrow Pacific projects go forward at St. Helens, Oregon, coal companies could soon be moving an additional 38 million tons of coal out of northwest Oregon. Meanwhile, other plans are underway at Grays Harbor, Washington and Coos Bay, Oregon.
All in all, coal shipments in the Northwest could easily top 100 million tons per year. Before long, the coal train I was so startled to see on the waterfront will not be an oddity in Oregon and Washington, it will be a daily fact of life. Within a year or so, the Northwest will decide whether it will go from being virtually coal-free to joining the ranks of the world’s foremost coal dealers.
It’s not a future many in the Northwest had considered in the past. A region that prides itself on green energy, new economy jobs, and a clean environment is about to crown a new king—coal.
Chris Burke
My first thought is, if it takes $15 to dig a ton of this coal out of the ground, and maybe $30 to ship it to China, where it sells for $120, there is no way this is not going to happen. Shippers will find a way. This coal competes with Australian coal, which has a shorter railroad ride that doesn’t go through any cities, and a shorter boat ride. Even against that competition, evidently it’s still vastly profitable to send coal to China from Montana. Warren Buffett, who bought BNSF a couple of years ago, is raking in the cash.
My second thought is, building a coal terminal at Longview would at least keep all these coal trains from running through Seattle and other western Washington cities.
And of course it should go without saying that the world is no closer to a “solution” to greenhouse warming than ever, and is doing virtually nothing to mitigate or prepare for its effects.
Chris Alemany
Note to the commenter above, much of Australian railroads are powered by electricity, not diesel. (Though don’t mistake that for a ‘clean’ alternative, as most of Australia is powered by coal-fired plants)
Toni Montgomery
I live a few feet from BNSF tracks and a crossing in Vancouver Washington. Coal passes every day. I have seen the effect it is having on my yard even though we have a sound wall. We have removed a tree due to coal dust and have cut branches that were packed with dust. I no longer put pond plants in as they get black specks that turn the plants yellow. I know we are breathing the dust with every passing coal car.
I want to make this clear, I don’t blame the train, it is a method of transport and a very good one. This is only about coal and what it will do to our economy.
My concerns are about coal are not simple due to the fact that most places these trains pass with coal do not receive any monetary reward. We receive the costs of blocked streets due to the one and a half mile long coal trains, loss of business due to clogged streets and loss of revenue due to a mass sale of property, that is, if we can ever sell. Depressed building due to coal, the chance of derailments which, in my case, could potentially destroy homes that sit along the rail and loss of life due to derailments and breathing coal dust. Our City would lose tax revenue in an already depressed time. We can’t afford coal to China! Who will want to locate here? What happens to all the recovery plans our City has?
My question is, who has thought about all the fruit growers and vinyards in Oregon and Washington? Along the Gorge we experience heavy winds and coal dust has been seen blowing off cars now imagine when the winds really start to blow. Some vinyards have coal trains passing right through their property. Has anyone thought of the long term effect of this? Coal dust on buds, honey bees taking the pollen from flower to flower that is contaminated with coal dust. They return to their hive with coal dust mixed with the pollen to make honey to feed the young bees and eventually in the honey that is sold to humans. Bee’s are not doing well right now without coal dust. How will our crops produce fruit with out honey bees? This is now a critical problem that scientists around the world are trying to solve, what is killing our bees. Do we really want to add coal dust to the mix?
I am a business person and my husband works for a company that has quaries and he also dredges. This is what butters our bread so for us to be against mining of coal and the transportation of coal is hard for anyone to understand as mining is our business. Coal is bad for all reasons, health, air, water, plants, animals,business,growth of Cities and safety. Revenue is either non- existant or small in comparison to actual costs. This is why the United States along with other countries around the world are closing coal burning plants, this includes China. This last ditch effort by a few to make more money off of coal to China must be stopped. It is just to high a price to pay for a short window with respect to how long anyone will be using coal generation in the future. Who really pays, we do!
Bob Kincaid
Congratulations and welcome to the toxicity of the Coal Cycle! As production increases and they cram a coal terminal of your very own down your throats there in or around Seattle, you’ll become intimately familiar with strange cancers that happen in clusters, with the poverty that of necessity is the handmaiden of coal, with “inexlplicable” rises in respiratory ailments and possibly even increases in birth defects, even among mothers who don’t smoke.
How can I say this? I’m an Appalachian, or “hillbilly” if you prefer. We here know intimately how poisonous coal is. Our wells have been poisoned our communities erased, our streams buried, our mountains leveled and even the air thickened with coal dust and the poisonous detritus of Ammonium Nitrate Fuel Oil explosives ( 3 MILLION pounds per day of that).
The Sacrifice Zone is moving to better feed the beast. Stop it NOW or it will begin feeding on your very world.
Lowell Chandler
If you are interested in potentially stopping the coal exports join us in Helena, Montana in August from the 13th through the 20th. We will be participating in non-violent direct action against the current and proposed coal exports; there will also be a large rally, potentially a 1,000 plus people, on August 13th in Helena. Our target is the Montana State Land Board who has authority to reject a lease of the Otter Creek Coal Tract. If the Otter Creek Coal Tract is built, it justifies the building of the Tongue River Railroad, which would open up hundreds of new coal mines for export in the northern section of the Powder River Basin.
Check out COALEXPORTACTION.ORG and join us to put a stop to coal exports and protect our communities from coal train pollution!