COAL REPORT August 12, 2008

A judge is set to rule this week on whether a Wise County logging operation is part of a proposed mining operation and, if so, whether the logging should be allowed before a mining permit is issued. Last week Federal judge Glen Williams issued a preliminary injunction stopping the logging on the Ison Rock Ridge site near Appalachia. The Bristol Herald-Courier reports that last week a US Magistrate, Pamela Meade Sargent, heard arguments that the logging was, and was not, connected with mining. The landowner, Penn Virginia Corporation, testified its timber agents knew nothing of the plans for a 1000-acre MTR job on the site, though Penn Virginia has leased the property to A&G Coal. The logging company, Mountain Forest Products, testified the logging was an ordinary logging job and should not be halted. Judge Sargent is expected to issue a ruling this week. In an interesting sidelight, she noted that a lot of the proposed mine site is within the town limits of Appalachia. She asked witness after witness if this is so, but no one knew. She noted, “It seems very odd that the state would allow active coal surface mining to go on within the town limits of an incorporated town.”

There’s a lot of coal in North Dakota, and the landowner is looking to mine it. The landowner in this case is the United States government, reports the Grand Forks Herald. The US owns about 5 million acres of coal lands in North Dakota, with a staggering 1.3 trillion tons of coal. Well, not so fast. The coal is actually low-grade lignite, and only about 2 percent of it is mineable with current technology. That’s still a lot of coal. The landlord, the Bureau of Land Management, has asked coal companies to say where they’d like to mine. A mining plan could be on the books a year from now, the newspaper says.

A group of leading British scientists has called on their government to stop licensing coal-fired power plants until carbon capture is a reality. They say they are not opposed to coal plants themselves so long as they don’t actually vent as lot of carbon. Five years ago, the British government announced it would make a priority of developing carbon capture and storage, or CCS. But according to the Guardian newspaper, there is only one CCS project in the works, a small one that won’t be operational till 2014. The scientists say that Britain is in danger of being stuck with a lot of dirty coal plants that will be dumping carbon into the air for at least a generation. Experts say that one-third of Britain’s generating capacity will have to be replaced over the next ten years.

Montana’s Crow Tribe is looking forward to plans for a $7 billion coal-to-liquids plant that is proposed for the reservation. The tribe signed an agreement with an Australian company to develop the facility. It would be the largest economic development plant in Montana’s history, reports the Associated Press. But as always there are uncertainties. $7 billion will be hard to find during the current economic conditions, and environmental groups say they will fight the plan unless it includes means to capture greenhouse gasses—which would require technology that doesn’t really exist at the present time.