McConnell prevents miners’ bailout

Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky blocked help for the pensions and health care for 120,000 retired miners and their families in West Virginia, the Washington Post reported.

There was bipartisan support for a plan to save the fund, but the Majority Leader wouldn’t allow it to happen.

McConnell’s office blocked efforts to rescue health and pension funds on which thousands of retired and disabled miners rely. Miners get an average of $530 a month in pension checks.

A plan that would ensure the solvency of the funds nearly made it through Congress in December as part of the bipartisan budget deal that cleared both chambers. But the bailout attempt — backed by key lawmakers from both political parties — was excluded from the deal at McConnell’s request, according to four Senate officials directly familiar with the events.

Without intervention, some of the funds could run out of cash before spring, Congressional officials say.

Two years ago, UMWA officials donated heavily to McConnell's political rival, Democrat Alison Grimes, during McConnell’s successful reelection bid.

After World War II, with miners threatening to strike, President Harry S. Truman ordered his secretary of the interior to negotiate an agreement with the president of the union on pension and healthcare benefits. Decades later, in 1992, Congress passed the Coal Act, requiring companies to continue contributing to pension plans for all covered retired employees.

To read the entire story, click on the blue

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/02/09/a-huge-coal-miners-pension-plan-is-on-the-brink-of-failure-one-senator-is-blocking-a-fix/?postshare=2161455070031110&tid=ss_fb-bottom&utm_term=.9f3db37f837b

 

Government greatly under-reports black lung cases

The government reports less than 10% of the actual black lung cases in coal miners, a National Public Radio survey of individual treatment centers reveals.

The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health reported 99 cases of "complicated" black lung, or progressive massive fibrosis,  in the last five years.

NPR found 962 cases during that time frame in only 11 black lung clinics in West Virginia, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Ohio. The actual total would be higher because some clinics had incomplete records and others declined to provide data.

At United Medical Group, a clinic in Coal Run Village, Ky., radiologist Brandon Crum had 60 cases in 20 months and 644 in three years.

Edward "Lee" Petsonk of West Virginia University has spent three decades addressing the disease and finds NPR's numbers "very disheartening, very disappointing."

"I've spent much of my career trying to find ways to better protect miners' respiratory health," Petsonk says. "It's almost like I've failed."

To read the article, click on http://www.npr.org/2016/12/15/505577680/advanced-black-lung-cases-surge-in-appalachia?utm_source=npr

12,500 coal miners’ healthcare in trouble

U.S. Senators from West Virginia, Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV), for the passage of the Miners Protection Act to keep 12,500 retired coal miners from losing their healthcare on December 31, 2016.  

The sources of the problem: 60% of their former employers no longer exist, at least on paper, and there are 10,000 active miners contributing to 120,000 retirees’ benefits.

St. Louis-based Peabody bailed out on the miners by spinning off Patriot in 2007 and agreeing in 2013 to pay $310 million into retiree benefits.

When Patriot filed for bankruptcy again in 2015, Peabody said that relieved it from future obligations. By that time, Peabody had paid $165 million.

On a related note, coal entities owned by West Virginia Governor-elect Jim Justice, a billionaire Democrat and the richest man in West Virginia, owe millions of dollars in fines for safety violations.  

 

A National Public Radio analysis concluded that work-loss injury rates are twice the national average and violations more than four times the national average.

As for the Manchin-Capito push, we’ll see. It’s a long way from “we should do this” to actually doing it.

McConnell blocks $1 billion to help coal miners

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell blocked $1 billion for job creation and economic development for coal communities.

The United Mine Workers of America’s retirement and health-care funds support about 120,000 former miners and their families.

It may run out of cash before summer is over even though the average monthly benefit is $530.

Administration officials reintroduced the proposal in the 2017 budget plan.

Republican leaders have shown little interest in backing initiatives from a White House they view as adversarial to coal. McConnell repeatedly refers to “Obama’s war on coal.”

But some Republicans, most notably Kentucky’s Rep. Harold Rogers, the House Appropriations Committee chairman, have pushed for congressional approval of key elements of the plan, including an appropriations in the December budget deal to expand job training and Internet access in the coal belt and to hire ex-miners to clean up abandoned mines.

The federal government has promised over the years to not let the UMW fund go out of business.

After World War II, with miners threatening to strike, President Harry S. Truman ordered his secretary of the Interior to negotiate an agreement with the president of the union on pension and healthcare benefits.

Decades later, in 1992, Congress passed the Coal Act, requiring companies to continue contributing to pension plans for all covered retired employees.

The four largest U.S. miners by output -- Peabody Energy, Arch Coal, Cloud Peak Energy and Alpha Natural Resources -- which account for nearly half of USA production, were worth a combined $34 billion in 2011. Today they are worth $150 million.

Coal production has declined precipitously in recent years. Finger-pointing has increased incrementally. Meanwhile, the current and former coal miners suffer from the political ping-pong game.

To read the Washington Post article, click on https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/02/09/a-huge-coal-miners-pension-plan-is-on-the-brink-of-failure-one-senator-is-blocking-a-fix/

 

Murray an expert on abandoning coal miners

If you want to see an example of chutspaw, look under Murray American Energy.

When the West Virginia House of Delegates put a year-long hold on large severance tax cuts for the coal and gas industries passed by the state Senate last week, Murray Energy spokesman Gary Broadbent sputtered:

“The leadership of West Virginia's House of Delegates and, particularly, Speaker Tim Armstead, have abandoned our coal miners today.”

Murray pumped a quarter-million dollars into the elections to get Republicans elected in West Virginia in hopes of getting the .

This is the same Murray Energy that:

1. Has thousands of safety violations at its Illinois Galatia mine had thousands of safety citations. Talk about “abandoning” coal miners.

2. Filed with the state Department of Environmental Protection to expand a coal slurry impoundment near the Harrison County mine, former called the Robinson Run mine.

3. Murray’s Crandall Canyon Mine in Utah collapsed and trapped six miners.

4. Laid off 214 people at its mines in Harrison, Ohio and Marshall counties.

Sounds like the pot calling the kettle black.

The tax reductions would cost West Virginia $100 million a year. And would hardly reverse the decline in coal consumption in America. In West Virginia, for example, there are about 20,000 coal miners, a far cry from the John L. Lewis/United Mine Workers days when there were 800,000 UMW members.

West Virginia history is littered with companies that ripped out its coal and timber resources with relatively little return to its tax revenues.

Although per-miner production has increased FIFTEENFOLD since 1950, thanks largely to rapid mechanization improvements, the median income in coal mining communities is 25% less than the national average. Tax cuts go to the corporations, not the miners.

Robert Murray – a former miner and the son of a paralyzed miner -- is CEO of the corporation based in St. Clairsville, Ohio that he founded in 1988.

Natural gas, oil produced in state replacing coal for electricity

West Virginia coal mining, a shadow of its former self, has competition from within the state: natural gas and oil.

In 2014 one EQT Corp. shale field well in Wetzel County provided enough fuel to generate electricity for 77,322 homes for a  year. Without polluting the air we breathe.

There could be even more natural gas delivered but current pipeline capacity is at 100%.  A $15 billion pipeline expansion has been proposed.

Drillers also extracted more than 8.3 million barrels of natural gas liquids (such as ethane, propane, butane, pentanes) in 2014 and 5.2 million barrels of oil.

 

So some of the financial loss to West Virginia’s economy by coal’s decline is being absorbed by shale natural gas and oil production in the Mountain State.

 

To read the entire article, click on http://www.chron.com/business/energy/article/West-Virginia-natural-gas-production-numbers-6779056.php

Coal no longer No. 1 for producing electricity

King Coal has been replaced by King Gas.

For the first time in history, natural gas passed coal as the top source of U.S. electric power generation. Dropping natural gas prices and ever-tougher regulations by environmentalists caused the switch.

About 31 percent of electric power generation in April came from natural gas, and 30 percent from coal. In April, electricity generated with natural gas climbed 21 percent over April 2014 while the amount generated with coal fell 19 percent.

This is not good news for West Virginia, where more than half of the adults are not employed and the official unemployment rate is 7.2%, the highest of any state.

Coal’s calamitous collapse

There’s no pussyfooting around it: Coal mining is in trouble.

Regulations have forced businesses to spend billion trying to clean the coal before it hits the air.

China, which burns half the world’s coal, is switching rapidly to natural gas and wind power.

European coal consumption is decreasing steadily.

Natural gas in North America has gotten much cheaper.

Clean-coal technology, once seen as the panacea to save the industry, raises the cost of coal-powered electricity generation by up to 80% and cuts efficiency by 30%.

The market capitalization of America’s four largest coal companies is $1.2 billion, an astounding and alarming freefall from $22 billion in 2010. That's only 5 years ago.

Coal mining employment went from 784,621 in the 1920s to 80,209 today. That’s almost a 90% drop. Few industries can survive such a staggering collapse.

And the annual production per miner is dropping steadily after it peaked in 2000. 

No wonder West Virginia has the highest unemployment rate in the nation. With the corn boom for gasoline and everything else, Nebraska is No. 1 on the good end of the unemployment list.

The glimmer of hope comes from poor countries, which prefer growth over greenery, particularly India.

Wyoming, with a more desirable type of coal, leapfrogged West Virginia as the No. 1 coal-producing state even though West Virginia has 20,281 coal miners to 6,673 in Wyoming.

You can real the entire article in The Economist by clicking on http://www.economist.com/news/business/21653622-coals-woes-are-spreading-it-still-has-its-fans-black-moods

Murray, plagued with mine safety citations, lays off 214 in state

Murray American Energy laid off 214 people at its mines in Harrison, Ohio and Marshall counties. Robert Murray – a former miner and the son of a paralyzed miner -- is CEO of the corporation based in St. Clairsville, Ohio that he founded in 1988.

The company blamed President Barack Obama, increased utilization of natural gas to generate electricity and the “extremely excessive” coal severance tax by the state.

Between 2008 and 2012, coal-fired electricity generation declined 24% while electricity from natural gas, wind and solar grew by 39%, 154% and 400%, respectively. West Virginia mine employment  dropped 13%.

Despite this, Murray has increased its West Virginia employment by about 400 jobs since the mines were acquired from CONSOL Energy in 2013.

The Marcellus Shale area in West Virginia and Pennsylvania is ranked first in the U.S. Energy Information Administration's top 100 U.S. gas fields list.

The Murray announcement comes less than a month after the company filed an application with the state Department of Environmental Protection to expand a coal slurry impoundment near the Harrison County mine, formerly called the Robinson Run mine, and four months after Ohio County Coal Co. announced a $45 million expansion of its coal preparation plant in the Marshall County community of Benwood.

Murray’s Crandall Canyon Mine in Utah, which collapsed and trapped six miners, and Murray's Illinois Galatia mine had thousands of safety citations.

Meanwhile, Xinergy Ltd., a Tennessee-based Appalachian coal producer, and its 25 subsidiaries have filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in United States Bankruptcy Court for the Western District of Virginia in Roanoke, Virginia.

In-state coal purchase subsidy may add jobs

Reducing severance tax and adding a subsidy for the purchase of in-state coal could add 200 coal mining jobs, according to the WVU Bureau of Business and Economic Research.

In 2013, utilities and other coal users in the Mountain State consumed 31 million tons of coal, but 41 percent came from out of state, usually Maryland, Virginia, and Ohio.

Although West Virginia imports nearly 14 million tons of coal, more than eight million is unlikely to be displaced by policy intervention. 

Coal deaths at record low in 2014

There were a record-low 16 coal mining deaths in 2014, four fewer than in 2013. Part of the reason is that there are fewer miners – down 8,000 from 2011.

The United Mine Workers Union, run by the legendary John L. Lewis, once had 800,000 members. Today there are 20,000 coal miners who belong to the UMW.

The previous coal mining all-time low was in 2009, with 18 deaths.

In 1907, the year of the Monongah mines explosions that killed 362 (official) to 500+ (Father Briggs & gravediggers’ estimates), more than 3,000 miners died.

Today West Virginia is second only to Wyoming in coal mining production.

The first commercial coal mining in America was in Midlothian, Virginia in the 1730s.