Wyoming Coal Price Surges to Record

...another excuse to raise our energy rates ...

NEW YORK (AP) - The price of coal mined in Wyoming's Powder River Basin surged to record highs last week, as electric utilities bid aggressively in the market to make up for shipments lost by a host of problems that have dogged coal producers and railroads since May.

Most recently, torrential rains in Kansas at the beginning of October washed away hundreds of feet of track on Union Pacific Corp.'s lines near Topeka and damaged several rail bridges. The disruption caused a backup over a hundred trains long - many of them carrying Wyoming coal - and caused several utilities that depend on coal shipped on those lines to run dangerously low on supplies.

"It was pretty serious," said Stephen Doyle, a coal market consultant who advises investment firms about the industry. "It took out a whole week's worth of deliveries from all those lines that feed into Kansas City and St. Louis."

more...

http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/invest-corp/2005/oct/10/101004908.html

Serious undermining of the roadbed. Added together, this is not a good thing.

(before he dicks you) is from where, again?

Oh, yeah. Wyoming. His godly wife even set her little pornographic lesbian novel in Wyoming.

A lot of the Repiglicans and DINOs here in WV rah-rah'd the energy bill, not noticing that it put Wyoming coal at a distinct advantage over Appalachian coal. The Wyoming coal people have even pitted east against west in the re-appropriation of the Abandoned Mine Lands Act.

Meanwhile, here in WV, this was the editorial today in our "liberal" newspaper:
http://wvgazette.com/section/Editorials/200510094

Try not to gag. That's right, WV (and other states that have been raped for coal) will be "the new Kuwait."

Gag me with a dragline!

Paradise

By: John Prine

When I was a child, my family would travel,
To western Kentucky, where my parents were born.
And there's a backwards old town that's often remembered.
So many times that my memories are worn.

And Daddy won't you take me back to Muhlenberg county,
Down by the Green River, where Paradise lay.
"Well I'm sorry, my son, but you're too late in askin'."
"Mr. Peabody's coal train has hauled it away."

Well, sometimes we'd travel right down the Green River,
To the abandoned old prison down by Aidrie Hill.
Where the air smelled like snakes: we'd shoot with our pistols,
But empty pop bottles was all we would kill.

And Daddy won't you take me back to Muhlenberg county,
Down by the Green River, where Paradise lay.
"Well I'm sorry, my son, but you're too late in askin'."
"Mr. Peabody's coal train has hauled it away."

Instrumental break.

Then the coal company came, with the world's largest shovel,
And they tortured the timber and stripped all the land.
Well, they dug for their coal till the land was forsaken.
Then they wrote it all down as the progress of man.

And Daddy won't you take me back to Muhlenberg county,
Down by the Green River, where Paradise lay.
"Well I'm sorry, my son, but you're too late in askin'."
"Mr. Peabody's coal train has hauled it away."

When I die, let my ashes float down the Green River.
Let my soul roll on up to the Rochester dam.
I'll be halfway to Heaven with Paradise waitin',
Just five miles away from wherever I am.

And Daddy won't you take me back to Muhlenberg county,
Down by the Green River, where Paradise lay.
"Well I'm sorry, my son, but you're too late in askin'."
"Mr. Peabody's coal train has hauled it away."

Should be the permanent anthem of the Mountain Range Removal Activists here. Glad you reminded me. Needs to be a piece of bumper music.

We're not only smarter than the other side, we're funnier and more creative, too!

:hi:

Scrambling for resources of late is merely the give-and-take of the free market; it doesn't hint at any shortfall troubles.

I wonder if Milkens in on this.

We have a lot of coal-burning plants in Wisconsin.

Oil, gas, and now electricity.

Woo hoo! :sarcasm:

a 100 watt bulb only burns 26 watts and last 5 years.
a 60 watt bulb only burns 14 watts, and lasts 5 years.

It cuts down 3/4 on your light bill. Now heating is another story, but there are energy saver appliances out there. Seems like the investment would be well worth it.

Also, I got my lightbulbs on sale, so it was $1 - $2 per bulb. I swiched out 16 at my townhouse - all of them. Total Cost was $24.

And I am exploring LED lamps, but so far the ones I have gotten had unpleasant color temperatures.

I bought the cheapest ones and they are soft white. What I read was that soft white wasn't available a few years ago and it's an advancement for them. I also read that people had a problem with them taking too long to warm up as well as the color on some of the first energy saver bulbs. Mine take an extra split second before they come on when I flip the swich on some of them, and then can take up to 20 seconds to reach full brightness. I usually don't notice though. The light comes on, it's already bright and I don't notice it growing brighter. I've only had them a few weeks so I'm used to them.

Now I want is an Energy saver heater, stove, tv and microwave. I read that they are out there and all I have to look for is the Energy Star logo on them.

It has to be made to pay for itself.

Did the UP build it or get trackage rights?

On edit: the Powder River basin line has been there for decades. Having to do some repairs shouldn't justify a big jump in coal shipping rates.

Massive rail project to link Wyoming coal fields waiting for federal OK

Copyright 2001 Associated Press
October 29, 2001

WASHINGTON--The fate of the biggest U.S. rail project in modern times -- a $1.4 billion, 900-mile line that has been on the drawing boards for 25 years -- could hang on a soon-to-be-released environmental impact study.

Controversy has enveloped the Powder River Basin project, proposed by Dakota, Minnesota & Eastern Railroad Corp., to link coal fields in Wyoming with railroad terminals at the Mississippi River.

Opponents say it would rattle small towns with faster-moving, mile-long trains, spoil remote grasslands and harm local taxpayers who may have to pay for infrastructure improvements.

http://www.climateark.org/articles/2001/4th/marailpr.htm

Apparently they are in the process of cranking up this project now:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dakota,_Minnesota_and_Eastern_Railroad

I remember a story in the Nation or Mother Jones a while back
about a town on the plains that was putting up a legal fight against
the proposed route of this project.

Another MJ piece about Powder River Coal:

The new range wars: they come on your land and take what lies beneath. In Wyoming's coalbed methane country, it's the ranchers versus the wildcatters

MOST AMERICANS NEVER VENTURE into the hills east of Sheridan, Wyoming. The highway to Yellowstone and the Tetons doesn't go that way, and once you head east of Sheridan, you come into a country that used to turn roadless pretty quickly. Its drama is its emptiness, its subtle beauty, its ability to sustain itself and the plants and animals that live upon it. To an outsider, the landscape may look simple, but it's really a complex maze of draws and arroyos and interconnected natural drainages, places where water might linger after a prairie storm, giving life to a late-summer flourish of grass, or where it might rush away in tumult, down into the Powder River or the Tongue.

I didn't expect these hills to look their best. They were in their third consecutive summer of drought. The drought was one thing--a part of nature, after all, no matter how bitter its toll. But in the hills above the Tongue River, where mixed-grass prairie had once intermingled with sagebrush steppe, some sections of the landscape looked like an industrial zone. Roads trailed off in every direction, each one ending at a wellpad or a compressor station or a storage site or a collection of stakes marking future pads and stations and sites. The county roads had been widened and covered in scoria to accommodate heavy truck traffic. Pale new dirt roads cut off across the hillsides and through the sunburned grass and sage, some gated and locked, a reminder that this was now a territory under occupation by men who had leased what lay under the landscape and to whom the landscape itself was largely an impediment.

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1329/is_6_27/ai_94129868

wonder what the bastard is making from this ....?????