By Michael Riordan
from Crosscut.com
If you listen carefully, you might hear the sound of the “coal export bubble” popping. Coal prices are plummeting globally, and the bottom seems nowhere in sight. Early this month the price of benchmark Australian thermal coal fell below $77 per metric ton, down 46 percent from its 2011 peak.
In the heady days of two or three years ago, this benchmark price soared to nearly $142. U.S. companies trotted out ambitious proposals for six Northwest export terminals to ship Powder River Basin coal from Montana and Wyoming to Asia, where it could fetch these bloated prices. But as prices fell back to more realistic levels this past year, three of the projects were abandoned.
Similar coal mining and terminal plans are being shelved in Australia, where companies are slashing output and jobs. Ditto for Indonesia, which also depends on the Asian market for its coal exports.
Unfortunately for the coal industry, these plans assumed that coal prices would keep rising as they had until 2011, that China would continue to need more coal for its power plants than it could produce itself, and that its demand for imports would keep prices high for years.
(To read the full article, go to crosscut.com/2013/08/26/michael-riordan-coal-bubble-bursting)
For those on Orcas Island, Lummi Leaders will discuss opposition to coal terminal, Saturday, August 31, at 5 p.m. in the Episcopal Parish Hall on Main Street in Eastsound.
For more on that, see: https://theorcasonian.com/lummi-leaders-to-discuss-opposition-to-coal-terminal
This is GREAT news~ the huge coal terminal at Cherry Point has been a bad idea from the beginning – the plan to build on the largest marine estuary in this area, the risky business of transporting the raw coal and also tar sands through the unique marine environment of the Salish Sea and the knowledge that China would have their own coal resource extraction up and running in five years are only three of the multitude of reasons to fight this endeavor. But, despite this news it still very important to keep up the combined efforts of the No-Coalitions, the Tribes and the collaborating environmental organizations to make sure that Cherry Point is not built and that the ships don’t sale!