By Lee Buchsbaum When things go wrong 4,000 feet into the mountain and two miles away from the nearest county road, or virtually anywhere on mine property, there is no 911 to call. Of the innumerable dangers facing coal miners every day,…
Results for "Buchsbaum"
U.S. Coal Operators Cling to Exports
By Lee Buchsbaum According to the variety of producers and analysts who presented at the recent 10th Coaltrans Americas Conference, which was held during January, in Miami, Fla., 2010 may develop into a much larger export year than even 2008. Recent demand…
From the Brink to the Top of the Charts: Canada’s Teck Coal Rebounds
By Lee Buchsbaum In the summer of 2008, Teck Coal Ltd., a subsidiary of Teck Resources, was booming and the company was focused on figuring out how to capitalize on the most robust export metallurgical coal market in years. One growth strategy…
Shifts in China’s Appetite for Steel Drives Development for New Canadian Met Mines
By Lee Buchsbaum While Teck’s prolific mines in southeastern British Columbia extract the lion’s share of the metallurgical coal produced in Canada, a growing number of companies, each spurred by Asian demand, are ramping up expansion plans for the long under-used met…
Miner Training: How Prepared is the Class of 2010?
By Lee Buchsbaum It wasn’t long ago that the biggest problem the coal industry faced was a lack of available labor. From 2004 through 2008, as markets expanded and operators rushed in to fill them, the industry quickly soaked up as many…
From Beckley, With Love
By Lee Buchsbaum In 2004, the headlines of regional southern Illinois newspapers were filled with a mixed sense of hope and cynicism when a new company called Steelhead Development, a subsidiary of the Beckley, W.Va.-based Cline Energy and Development Group, majority owned…
A Battle for the Ages: EPA vs. Coal Mining
BY Lee Buchsbaum Since February, the EPA has placed 175 surface coal mining projects under review and halted 79 of them because of their effects on surface water. Nationwide, the Clean Water Act has become one of the main prisms through which…
Alaska’s Usibelli Coal: Three Generations and Counting
By Lee Buchsbaum Nestled against the tallest mountains in North America and only 10 miles from the entrance to Alaska’s Denali National Park, Emil Usibelli began mining coal in 1943. Almost 70 years later, the Usibelli coal mine (UCM) remains a thriving,…
Mutual Respect Instills Loyalty
…was asked to become Tournament Director of the Mountain State Coal Classic Basketball Tournament. The Classic has enjoyed tremendous success by providing more than $300,000 in scholarships and over $325,000 in direct support to participating schools. Lee Buchsbaum visited the Usibelli coal…
Washington’s Assault on Appalachia: By Remanding Permits, Obama’s EPA Puts the Future of Appalachian Surface Mining in Jeopardy
By Lee Buchsbaum On Election Day last November, Appalachia voted against Barack Obama in an attempt to stave off what many feared would be his administration’s war on coal mining, an industry still central to the struggling regional economy. Their fears thus…
West Virginia Braces for a Major Hit
…clashed at public hearings held throughout the region. Saying outward hostility toward the Obama administration is growing in coal country would be a major understatement. With tension mounting, we dispatched Lee Buchsbaum to cover the Appalachian permitting debacle. What he found was…
Rend Lake College Celebrates the Opening of a New Coal Miner Training Facility
By Lee Buchsbaum In early August, Rend Lake College in Ina, Ill., celebrated the culmination of four years of planning by dedicating its new 20,000-square-foot (sq ft) Coal Miner Training Center. The opening ceremonies took place during the Illinois Mining Institute’s (IMI)…
Long Term Contracts, Expansion, Innovation and Stability: North Dakota’s Lignite Mines Thrive
By Lee Buchsbaum While driving through the lignite coalfields of western North Dakota, the wind-blown plains open up into mostly tree-less vistas, with ranches dotting the landscape. Though it’s one of the least populated states of the continental U.S., in many ways,…
Sunrise Coal, an Innovative New Indiana Player Continues to Grow
By Lee Buchsbaum Surrounded by some of the biggest names in the business, independent producer Sunrise Coal LLC’s Carlisle underground mine in Carlisle, Ind., began development in March 2006. Initially conceived as a mid-sized 1.5 million ton per year (tpy) producer, Sunrise…
Mining into the New Millennium
by Lee Buchsbaum After more than 30 years of production and a billion tons of coal shipped, Foundation Coal West (FCW), a subsidiary of Foundation Coal Holding Inc., continues to operate two of the original surface mines in Wyoming’s Powder River Basin….
CA Sidebar 01
