November 23, 2011

Manyuan coal, a Chinese coal mining company, met on Wednesday with Montana governor Brian Schweitzer, telling Schweitzer that they were interested both in buying Montana coal as well as potentially opening their own coal mine in Montana. Schweitzer said that he hopes to continue the conversation in January. He is currently scheduled to visit India at that time and hopes to make a detour into China as well.

Read article at http://www.therepublic.com/view/story/fbdc68f3241b49afa5e485ba18bab011/MT–Schweitzer-Coal/

November 22, 2011

The Chuitna Citizens Coalition and Cook Inletkeeper have followed a suit claiming that the Alaska Department of Natural Resources has ignored their 2009 application for water rights on the Middle Creek tributary while processing a 2010 application granting the Chuitna coal mine group rights to use water for drilling groundwater monitoring wells. The CCC’s application requests the right to use the majority of Middle Creek water for salmon spawning and fishing; the Chuitna coal mine proposes burying 11 miles of Middle Creek for 25 years as part of its normal operations, so if the CCC application is granted, the mine would be forced to come up with an alternative plan for mining, something it says it can’t do.

Attorney Valerie Brown for the CCC said state’s position is that applying for water rights isn’t enough for the coalition to be have standing on issues of water rights; they must first be granted such rights. Yet, she says, the state refuses to process the coalition’s application and furthermore there are hundreds of similar cases across the state. The ADNR, for its part, says that it works with Alaska Fish and Wildlife to prioritize applications for water rights so as to process them in order of importance not by who filed first. “At this time, there are other in-stream flow applications that are ahead of these three applications in the agency review process,” said ADNR spokesperson Elizabeth Bluemink.

Read article at http://www.newsminer.com/bookmark/16532587

Nov. 21, 2011

British Columbia has passed a law banning mining and drilling in nearly 400,000 acres on the Canadian portion of the Flathead River Basin. Intense negotiations have been ongoing for the past five years. This is a major step toward protecting Flathead River Basin, it’s forests, mountains and wildlife.

Companies have tried for  many years to develop the Flathead River Basin for gas drilling, gold exploration and coal mining.   Presently eighty percent of the oil and gas leases on the US side along the river basin have been retired, the remaining are pending in Congress.

Read article at: http://www.greatfallstribune.com/article/20111121/NEWS01/111210309/Canadian-province-OKs-law-protecting-Flathead

November 17, 2011

The Bureau of Land Management has announced that it is rejecting the $0.15/ton lease bid by Signal Peak for the rights to mine coal adjacent to its existing Bull Mountains Coal Mine. The company had planned to start mining the new seams as early as 2013, but the lost bid may setback company plans for increased production and shipping volumes of its product to Asia and South America.

Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer expressed concern about the rejection. “What is the price, BLM? Can you tell us? It makes it tough to bid when there’s no competitive bid and the people that sell it won’t tell you how much they want,” he said. Because of the BLM’s policy of “lease by application” in the Powder River Basin, auctions rarely have multiple bidders, and as such, the BLM does not disclose what it considers fair-market value to be for a coal reserve. Following the rules of the “lease by application” process, Signal Peak has the right to request another lease sale (or a different lease sale), but because of the mandatory public comment period, the fastest that the lease sale could go through would be 3-4 months.

Read article at http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D9R2RB4G2.htm

November 16, 2011

Signal Peak, the owners of the Bull Mountains coal mine, have submitted a bit of $0.15/ton for the right to extract more than 35M tons of coal in a plot adjacent to the Bull Mountains mine. If the Bureau of Land Management awards them the contract, they will also pay an 8% tariff any coal extracted. Because the Powder River Basin is not legally a coal-mining region, leases are awarded through a process called “lease by application” where mines tell the BLM what they want to lease. BLM then auctions that lease, which normally results in a single bidder, as it did in this case.

The BLM must now decide whether Signal Peak’s offer represents a fair value for the amount of coal involved. In two recent coal lease sales in the Wyoming portion of the Powder River Basin, the winning bids were more than $1.10/ton, though the seams involved were surface mineable, and so should cost less to extract. Opponents to the coal lease cited, among other things, that the BLM has said that it will only consider the value of the top seam in the region when it determines whether the price is fair, whereas Signal Peak has said that it may mine two additional deeper seams. They also are concerned about Signal Peak’s previous announcement that most of the coal extracted will be exported to Asia.

Read article at http://www.therepublic.com/view/story/79dd81303e9544a8832b02010226ea40/MT–Coal-Lease/

Nov. 15, 2011

Harlan County Kentucky man,  David J. Middleton died nearly two weeks later after the bulldozer he was driving at the Mill Branch Mine fell down a high wall sustaining serious head injuries making this the eighth mining-related death in Kentucky this year, and the fourth since Oct. 28, 2011.  Middleton was 28 years old.

Read article at: http://www.wdrb.com/story/16045042/ky-man-dies-of-injuries-suffered-at-surface-mine

November 9, 2011

The US Forest Service has approved a 1700 extension in the mining permit of Arch Coal’s West Elk Mine near Paonia, Colorado. But while Arch Coal touted the decision as good for its job-saving potential, environmental groups decried the decision as flying in the face of the 10th Circuit Court’s decision to uphold the Roadless Rule. As a result of the expanded mining, Arch will have to build 48 well pads and 6.5 miles of roads to handle the venting of methane from the mine, all within the Sunset Trail roadless area adjacent to the West Elk Wilderness Area in Colorado’s Western Slope.

“The public loses a fantastic wild area, loses millions in potential royalties from methane that is wasted instead of captured, and loses due to the massive pollution the mine causes. It’s time the Forest Service stood up to Big Coal and said no to this kind of damaging expansion” said Jeremy Nichols from the environmental organization Wild Earth Guardians.

Read article at http://coloradoindependent.com/105553/colorado-coal-mine-ok-blasted-as-roadless-rule-reversal-by-obama-administration

November 3, 2011

The U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) proposed a 3,500-acre expansion to southern Utah’s only strip mine, the Coal Hollow Mine, according to a report released Friday. The current 635-acre mine is operated by Alton Coal Development on private land just southwest of Bryce Canyon National Park. The proposal would allow open-pit mining in areas less than 300 feet from the coal seam, and underground mining where the coal is deeper. The proposed 3.500-acre expansion consists of 1,300-acres of private land overlying federally owned mineral deposits with the remaining 2,200-acres of surface and minerals completely owned by the federal government.

The BLM estimates the mine would operate for 25 years, removing about 50 million tons of coal. The agency has also openly stated localized initial impacts will be significant but resources will eventually be restored after mining and effects on Bryce Canyon National Park will be negligible. These findings were evaluated and reported by the BLM in an Environmental Impact study that began in 2006.

Read report at http://www.blm.gov/ut/st/en/prog/energy/coal/alton_coal_project/alton_coal_eis.html

Two men working on a blasting crew in the open-pit Equality mine in western Kentucky were killed after a high wall in the mine collapsed as they drove by. Though rescuers arrived on the scene almost immediately, it took more than 5 hours to unearth workers Darrel Winstead, 47, and Samuel Lindsey, 23; Ohio County coroner Larry Bevil said it was very likely that the men were killed on impact.

Equality, owned by Armstrong Coal, is a new mine that produced its first coal in 2010. In its short operational life, the mine has reported no other accidents to the Mining Safety and Health Administration. However, the mine was already cited for 15 violations in its short life, including violations related to the mine’s high walls.

Read articles at http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/industries/coroner-2-workers-likely-died-instantly-when-rocks-fell-on-truck-at-western-ky-surface-mine/2011/10/28/gIQA9ajxPM_story.html and http://www.courier-journal.com/article/20111028/NEWS01/310280010/2-miners-die-wall-collapse-Western-Kentucky-strip-mine

October 27, 2011

After more than 16 months of preparation, Linc Energy finally requested its operating permit from the Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality for its proposed Underground Coal Gasification (UGC) demonstration plant near Wright, Wyoming. The plant, if approved, will be the largest UGC installation in the country and the first in the Powder River Basin.

The UGC process involves injecting hot air and chemicals into deep coal seams in a way that partially burns the coal underground but in the process releases a large amount of combustible gases that be piped to the surface and either burned directly or converted to substitutes for natural gas, diesel fuel or gasoline. Environmentalists worry both about the carbon emissions from such syngas, as well as the potential for polluting water aquifers the gases pass through on the way in or out of the coal seam.

Read articles at http://www.morningstar.com.au/Stocks/SignalGNews/20111028/229074 and http://billingsgazette.com/news/state-and-regional/wyoming/article_68f6273b-bf43-528b-9ab4-44f421d1610f.html