Posted on 08/03/2015 9:30:43 AM PDT by rktman
Alpha Natural Resources has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
On Monday, a statement from the company said: "The Board of Directors of Alpha Natural Resources authorized the filing of the Chapter 11 cases to enhance the company's future as it weathers a historically challenged coal market."
"The relief provided by Chapter 11 will allow the company to reorganize and emerge as a financially viable business that is better positioned to compete in dynamic energy markets."
Bloomberg reported last Thursday the company had been planning to file today.
The coal industry is in turmoil. Demand for natural gas is surging, and coal has become a less-preferred fuel. That has spelt trouble for several coal miners.
Patriot Coal and Walter Energy have also filed for bankruptcy within the last two years.
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
not one mention of the regulatory changes? really? The writer is a fool.
Our muslim pres. doesn’t care at all about the coal miners and their ability to make a living!
Bam-Bam cares about his masters, that House of Saud, making money from the sale of petroleum. That is all. Appalachian coal miners are Amreican. And, primarily, “white”. To Barack Hussein Soetoro 0dinga Soebarkah 666 0bama, they aren’t even people.
I own stock in ARLP. No wonder it is down today, despite an upwards revision. ARLP is the only coal company worth looking at, it is solvent and an 11% dividend.
Can’t wait until Obama CO2 emissions cease.
None of the new regs matter as long as the writer can keep his feet dry by enacting such. You know, the 200 ft sea level rise that’s predicted to happen by, oh, next week(?).
“Can’t wait until Obama CO2 emissions cease.”
LOL!
We have several coal industry clients, and a majority of them are closing down, many with bankruptcies.
King Putt said he was going to destroy the coal industry, and on that one point he was not lying.
King Putt’s war on the middle class knows no bounds.
that is good!
I expect the coal resources to be sold off to China.
I traded ANR a time or two in 2006, I think. They had massive reserves of met coal, coal used for making coke for steelmaking. At one time, IIRC, met coal was worth about 4x as much as “thermal” (burn it) coal.
It was $128.
We may have to export all the energy-rich resource we have in great abundance to other countries with less critical attitudes about the use of coal.
Clean coal is possible, and it can be done with the technology we now have. By heating finely pulverized coal, we may recover all the volatile compounds contained in coal, from methane to tar, some of which form kerogen, which may be refined into any of a number of fuel products in their own right, and the end product, coke. The coke is fed into a heating chamber, where the temperature is raised to about 1,000 degrees F., and a stream of water is directed at the glowing coke embers, forming a stable mixture of Carbon monoxide and hydrogen gas, both excellent fuels in their own right, and these may be used to provide the necessary heat to drive the reaction. By using something called the Fischer-Tropf process, it is possible to go on to generate whatever amount of a wide variety of hydrocarbons are needed to maintain a reliable supply of these end products for commercial use, which may be used in plastics fabrication or as fuel in their own right.
When fully exploited, ever atom of carbon in the coal is turned into carbon dioxide, and in the process, much useful energy is extracted. Excess heat is dispersed to the atmosphere and hydrosphere (surface waters) of the planet, where it is radiated off into space while the face of the earth is turned away from the sun, a phenomenon that occurs every 24 hours, day after day, year after year, millennium after millennium. There is NO runaway heat accumulation.
Lucky the US doesn’t need a steel industry anymore. Oh, wait, what?
The wise commenter reads the whole article before saying the writer does not mention regulatory changes. Here is a quote: “In Alpha Natural’s statement, CEO Kevin Crutchfield noted that more stringent government regulation has pushed electric utility companies away from coal.
That met coal was being shipped all over world, China was paying up huge for it, Hampton Roads in VA was a super busy port, because most (no, all) US-produced met coal is from the East. Western coal is lignite = crud. I think met coal was going for 8 times thermal coal at one point. This is what commodities do....they soar, they crash. Still, met coal is almost indispensable for steelmaking.
Our coal won WW2. It gave us the edge to save mankind.
How does that change taste?
“Under my plan … electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.”
“If somebody wants to build a coal-fired power plant, they can. It’s just that it will bankrupt them,”
“This administration promised before the election that they were going to bankrupt coal,” Rep. John Shimkus (R-Ill.) said at a House Subcommittee on Energy and Power hearing,
“Well, we can’t say we weren’t warned,” Patterson wrote, charging that the greenhouse gas rule will “virtually destroy the coal industry, just as President Obama once promised he would do.”
Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0412/74892.html#ixzz3hlirnhFV
Anyone have thoughts on how this could effect electricity generation rates?
I guess 0bama has kept at least one promise.
The workers who will be losing their jobs had better remember that it is the socialists doing this to them.
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