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Collection: Northwest Coal & Oil Exports

Nothing Can Go Wrong at Coal Terminals?

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Except, oops: That’s a photo taken this morning of British Columbia’s Westshore Coal Terminal. A cargo vessel smashed through the center of the loading trestle—thus the big gap in the middle—putting it out of commission and dumping coal directly into the Strait of Georgia. The coal contamination is clearly visible as the dark streaks in … Read more

The Reality of Coal Mining Jobs

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Think about coal miners and you probably envision old Americana images: soot-blackened union guys with picks slung over their shoulders. But the truth is, modern-day coal mining is highly mechanized and it employs relatively few workers, many of them non-union.

Consider the coal companies in the Powder River Basin that extract nearly 500 million tons of coal each year with just 7,000 workers. That’s nearly half of all the coal mined in the US each year and it works out to roughly 66,000 tons of coal for each worker, on average. It’s an astonishing display of the industrial efficiency deployed in strip mining-like techniques. Yet it also means that coal mining is a poor strategy to create jobs.

In fact, as economists at the University of Massachusetts’ Political Economy and Research Institute have shown, it’s hard to make a worse jobs investment than coal.

Nearly any other infrastructure investment produces more jobs than coal, even when you factor in the indirect jobs and other secondary jobs. It just doesn’t stack up.

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Visualizing 48 Million Tons of Coal

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How much is 48 million tons of coal?

It’s not an academic question. If big coal companies get their way, that’s how much coal will be shipped through Seattle, up to an export terminal north of Bellingham, and then on to Asian markets each year.

A single ton is easy enough to visualize: it’s 40 cubic feet, or a stack that’s 2 feet on a side and as high as the rim of a basketball hoop.  But 48 million tons is tough to visualize without some context, and a little math.

Math? Context?  Sounds like a job for…an infographic!!! (Click to embiggen.)

In short, 48 million tons makes a great, big, ginormous pile of coal. A pile nearly 1,000 feet high, and more than half a mile in diameter. A pile that would bury a huge part of downtown Seattle—stretching from Pike Place Market in the north to the Smith Tower in the south. A pile that just happens to be be a bit taller than Seattle’s tallest skyscraper.

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What Coal Trains Mean for Property Values

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In June, Sightline wrote about the possibility that coal trains could damage property values in the Northwest based on an economics research paper that focused on southern California. Now, we’re very pleased to see that Climate Solutions is publishing a detailed analysis of the losses that coal trains would inflict. Ross Macfarlane has the details: … Read more

Is China’s Demand for Coal Evaporating?

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There’s mounting evidence that the Northwest coal export plans are on shaky ground in no small part because of what’s happening in China.

China, which accounts for about half of the entire world’s annual coal consumption, is also the world’s top importer. To a very large extent China drives the global coal trade. But as a flurry of recent news accounts reveal, China’s demand for coal is weakening—and it’s sending shockwaves throughout the industry.

Here are a few key trends to watch.

Chinese demand for coal is down. The government is urging Chinese mining firms to rein in production as unused coal stockpiles grow and prices fall in tandem with a struggling national economy. Major newspapers in China are reporting that “the outlook is not rosy for the coal industry.” And in fact, China’s largest coal producer posted a 7 percent drop in profits in the third quarter.

China is going green. One of Australia’s top economists, Ross Garnaut, recently erupted over the “blind belief” in China’s unquenchable thirst for coal imports. He points out:

China had exceeded its ambitious emissions targets, cutting coal-fired generation by more than 7 per cent in the past year. A rapid expansion in hydroelectricity, wind, biomass, solar and nuclear power had pushed down coal’s share of energy production from 85 to 73 per cent.

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Kinder Morgan’s Coal Pollution on the Mississippi

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Kinder Morgan has big coal export designs for the Columbia River. Before Northwest officials decide whether to give the go-ahead, the public should examine Kinder Morgan’s track record with coal elsewhere because it’s plain awful.

And it’s only getting worse.

Down south, Jonathan Henderson has collected a series of images of Kinder Morgan’s operations on the lower Mississippi where the firm stores huge coal piles by the river side with only puny containment systems. When Hurricane Isaac hit the region in late August, it overwhelmed Kinder Morgan’s bare-bones safety features sending coal cascading into local water bodies and blanketing the surrounding marshes with coal dust.

As Henderson points out in his commentary:

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Have a Say in Coal Exports

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If you’re concerned about coal export proposals in the Northwest, now is the time to speak up.

Government agencies are now accepting public comments about two of the five coal export plans:

Port of Morrow, Oregon. A coal terminal on the Columbia River proposed by Ambre Energy, an Australian coal company, appears to be on a fast track for approval. Read more about the very serious problems with this scheme and why it demands further review. The public has until October 31, 2012 to submit comments.

Cherry Point, Washington. The coal terminal proposed for the Bellingham area would be the biggest in North America and it would multiply coal trains through the Puget Sound region by 10 times over current levels. Government agencies have just begun “scoping” their review—that is, determining which factors they will consider when they conduct the Environmental Impact Statement for the project.

Opponents of the coal terminals are arguing for a broad scope that would evaluate the full range of impacts from coal shipments. They are also arguing that it is inappropriate to review the five coal export plans in isolation from one another. It would be fairer to consider all of them at once under an area wide Environmental Impact Statement to assess the cumulative impact of these proposals. The public can submit scoping comments now.

The public is invited to attend hearings about scoping for the Cherry Point proposal. There will be seven hearings held around Washington, starting this Saturday in Bellingham. The details are below:

  • Bellingham, WA: Sat. 10/27, 11:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. At Squalicum High School, 3773 East McLeod Road, Bellingham, Washington 98226-7728

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Chinese Guestworkers Head Into BC Coal Mines

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This is surely one of the stranger dimensions of the coal export saga we’ve been cataloging: the Canadian government is approving guest-worker status for as many as 2,000 Chinese nationals to extract coal from British Columbia’s underground mines.

As the Vancouver Sun reports:

Canadians “just don’t have the experience” operating the equipment needed to safely extract coal in underground mines, said John Cavanagh, chief executive of Vancouver-based Canadian Dehua International Mines Group Inc., a company founded by China-born Vancouver businessman Naishun Liu.

Understandably, Canada’s unions are not exactly thrilled with the idea:

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