Posted on 03/19/2006 7:55:54 PM PST by Flavius
Illinois Coal Mining Making Comeback As Rising Demand for Cheap Power Has the Energy Industry Rethinking
COULTERVILLE, Ill. (AP) -- Twenty-two stories below ground just outside this southern Illinois outpost, the mechanical beast with spinning, carbide teeth chews coal chunks out of the earth's bowels, then spews them out its back end into a parade of low-riding dump trucks, of sorts.
ADVERTISEMENT click here A conveyor belt takes the black bounty to the surface, much of the freshly harvested stuff reeking of sulfur that folks around this town, population 1,300, consider the smell of better times.
It was just 18 months ago when this mine -- the last one around here -- finally went under, costing the area 250 good-paying jobs as just another casualty in an industry rocked by the tightening of federal clean-air standards in the 1990s.
But St. Louis-based Peabody Energy Corp. bought the mine and reopened it last August as high oil and natural gas prices, power plant technology and rising demand for cheap power had the energy industry rethinking Illinois' high-sulfur coal.
"It's a godsend," Bill Jarrett, Coulterville's president, says of the mine and its jobs. "We needed it bad."
The restart of the mine here is a snapshot of a comeback that coal, once king throughout central and southern Illinois, is waging across this state. Three new mines capable of producing more than 9 million tons of coal annually are expected to open this year in Illinois.
The fact that coal from Peabody's Gateway Mine about two miles from here stinks of rotten eggs is significant. Shunned over the past decade or so because its high content of sulfur -- tied to air-polluting sulfur dioxide -- made it too pricey and "dirty" to burn, Illinois coal is finding increased markets as power plants increasingly using advanced pollution-controlling "scrubbers" are better equipped to handle such fuel.
Many credit coal's revival to the fossil fuel increasingly being viewed as an alternative to expensive oil and natural gas. Others point to the binge in construction of -- or plans for -- new coal-fired power plants to satisfy the nation's surging demand for electricity.
"The simple answer is: Oil prices make coal so much more competitive," Joe Angleton, head of the state Department of Natural Resources' Office of Mines and Minerals. "The economics are all on coal."
Few states are richer in coal than Illinois, where an estimated 38 billion tons of coal yet to be recovered trail only reserves found in Montana and Wyoming, according to the Energy Information Administration, the Energy Department's statistics arm.
And while coal already produces more than half the nation's energy, the Energy Information Administration forecasts that U.S. coal demand will rise about 2 percent a year over the next two decades.
There's apparently no shortage of the black rock: Across the nation, coal can be found under 458,600 square miles -- about 13 percent of this country's land area -- and accounts for an estimated 35 percent of the world's usable coal reserves, the largest of any nation, according to the Illinois Clean Coal Institute.
Jarrett, Angleton and others say there are plenty of reasons to feel stoked about what's happening in Illinois, which ranked ninth among coal-producing states in 2004, churning out 2.9 percent of the nation's supply.
"For the first time in years, we have growth" in Illinois, Angleton says. "We have a lot of things on the drawing board, and we have a lot of people expressing interest" in prospecting this state for coal.
Not far from here outside of Marissa, Peabody looks to build a $2 billion, 1,500-megawatt power plant fed by a new, neighboring mine expected to supply 6 million tons of coal a year. Peabody said the project would create 450 permanent jobs and pump some $100 million into the local economy each year.
Several plants that could convert Illinois coal into cleaner-burning gas are planned. And Illinois is vying for the federal research project dubbed FutureGen, a coal-based, emissions-free power plant officials say could be a billion-dollar prototype for nonpolluting electrical generation systems of tomorrow.
All of it is welcomed in Illinois, which since the 1990s has found its coal less in demand because of its sulfur content, higher than that found in mines in the West -- even though Midwestern coal generally has a higher heat-producing ability.
Illinois' coal production, which peaked in 1918 at 89 million tons and a work force of more than 100,000, took a beating in the 1990s after the federal Clean Air Act required coal-fired power plants to either burn low-sulfur coal or install costly "scrubbers" to curb the emission of sulfur dioxide, a cause of acid rain.
To meet those new requirements, Midwestern plants found it cheaper to import low-sulfur coal from Western states like Wyoming. In Illinois, an industry that produced 60 million tons of coal and boasted more than 10,000 jobs in 1990 plunged to 33 million tons and fewer than 3,500 workers just a decade later as many of the mines closed.
Illinois coal mines numbered about 45 in 1980, twice the 22 the Department of Labor's Mine Safety and Healthy Administration now lists as active in the state.
To accommodate the burgeoning resurgence in coal mining, the state has added four mining inspectors, bringing its full-time force to 12 -- a number Angleton deems adequate in a state proud that, come April, it will have had no mine fatalities in three years.
At least anecdotally, there's apparently no shortage of workers willing to plumb coal from the earth's bowels, commonly for $50,000 to $70,000 a year. During its job fair last year as it readied the Gateway Mine for reopening, Peabody had six applications for every available job at the roughly 200-acre site, said Vic Svec, a Peabody spokesman.
"Where most of these (new) mines are going, the areas are fairly well depressed, so you'll have people vying for those jobs," Angleton said.
Jarrett, Coulterville's president, has seen that up close.
When it comes to jobs, Jarrett says, "anything we get helps."
Energy Information Center, http://www.eia.doe.gov
National Mining Association, http://www.nma.org
Southern Illinois University's Coal Research Center, http://www.crc.siu.edu
Department of Energy's Office of Fossil Energy, http://www.fossil.energy.gov
Illinois Clean Coal Institute, http://www.icci.org
Illinois State Geological Survey, http://www.isgs.uiuc.edu/isgshome/coal.htm
I didn't even know they HAD coal mines in Illinois. You learn something every day.
well just like 70's
dirty industries are happy again, just when the fuel cells and wind farms and solar cells get a tad forward
someone remember virtually free black rocks in the ground
people are predictable
My father claimed that one of his chores during the depression was trampimg 5 miles to pick up coal along the Railroad tracks for family heating.<P?
Grandfather says he was selling it to others. LOL
There was a lot of deep coal mining going on in southern Illinois and in central Illinois, where I am there are strip mines.
Central and especially southern Illinois sits on some of the richest coal mining territory in the world. Only trouble is is that Illinois coal, although higher in energy BTU's, is dirtier than most - sending the eco-greenies into a tizzy. With improved smoke-scrubbing technology these days, Illinois coal is poised to make a huge comback.
Every day until he died, my grandpa would cough and hack up a lung, a result of working in the mines here in central IL when he was five (back in the day before child labor laws).
Hopefully coal will be king again.
it never really went away,
Here's something else that you may find surprising: Iowa has decent-sized coal deposits too.
They're located in the south-central part of the state. Here is a link that may interest you:
http://fp.uni.edu/iowahist/Social_Economic/CoalMining_inIowa/coal_mining_in_iowa.htm
'wind farms'
OOOh--dirty word for JF'nK and the Swimmer.
Where does a fella buy coal, anyway? I don't think we have a coal company anymore in town, and nothing in the Yellow Pages...
I sure hope that Southern Illinois coal makes a big comeback - it is sad to see these little towns around here; any more they look like ghost towns. Of course, getting FutureGen built down here would be really sweet.
I think if the demand for Illinois coal really zooms, watch for the Canadian National Railroad to seriously look at buying a whole bunch of AC locomotives to support coal mine operations in southern Illinois on the former Illinois Central Railroad lines.
It takes a certain kind of courage to go into the bowels of the earth in order to provide for your family, IMO. I honor his way of life, but I'm really glad my father made the decision to get out of that town and that lifestyle by joining the Army Air Corp in 1940.
Lots of mines in southern Illinois and in the adjacent region of Indiana.
Your grandfather was not alone. Mine did the same during the depression.
Because I thought of southern Illinois as the "breadbasket of the world", I did a google search and found the following URL--and found where coalmining in southern Illinois is viewed with an eye toward its adverse effects on "the breadbasket of the world":
http://www.pjstar.com/news/ssection/coal/REG_B896U3VO.0030.shtml
Typo made in that URL! Should be:
http://www.pjstar.com/news/ssection/coal/REG_B896U3VO.030.shtml
L
Illinois Clean Coal Institute
http://icci.org/
Energy Research for a Cleaner Environment
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.