As if we didn't have enough back-and-forth speculating over the cost of diesel fuel and fuel oil just a short while ago......

https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-bu ... excise-tax



As noted above, this is making permanent an already-applied, temporary excise tax on coal--confirming once again the old adage "there is no such thing as a temporary tax program." The program had previously been extended for a four-year period, and was reported as "This tax funds the Black Lung Disability Trust Fund, upon which many miners with black lung rely for monthly benefits and health care costs."

All the "analysis" I can find of this latest tax is loaded with partisan vitriol, so it's unfit for reposting or linking here. (My own cynicism: Does anyone seriously think for a moment they'll dispense with this tax if/when black lung is no longer regarded as a problem and goes the way of, say, polio?)

Any of you coal-burners noticing an effect lately, or is good ol' ordinary inflation and supply problems enough for you now?

Considering the retail cost of coal delivered and on the ground, an extra $0.60 per ton isn't even going to budge the needle.

If you Google it, you find that there are still many sick miners with black lung, and the coal companies all went bankrupt, so there is no one but the government to pay for their health care.

The issue for me would be "what percentage of the collected tax revenue is actually disbursed to miners with black lung". If that number is lower than, say, around 96%, someone should start making a noise about it.

It might be a fine thing to withhold whatever percentage of the tax doesn't go to victims. But watch as that gets labeled 'frivolous'...

If you live in Pennsylvania, you REALLY understand the supreme disingenuity of "temporary" taxation for a purportedly "good cause":

Pennsylvanians are still paying a 10% sales tax on booze to help "pay for" the citizens of Johnstown affected by severe flooding in 1936 (no, not the big dam break flood, a later one). Oh wait, that tax is now 18%, and has been for 45 years now.

https://philly.thedrinknation.com/artic ... Our-Booze-

First, the US Coal Excise Tax was established to fund the Federal Black Lung program from 1972. Most of the collieries had gone out of business and were not available to pay for miners' lung disabilities (pneumoconiosis and anthracosilicosis mainly) It's caused by breathing coal dust. PA had a network of State General Hospitals in the coal regions to treat the miners, all of which have been divested by now.

The Commonwealth of PA Johnstown Flood Tax of 1936 was to be temporary, to help Johnstown recover from the 1936 flood (which was caused by melting snow and three days of heavy rain.) The tax was later made permanent and switched to General Revenue.

Johnstown has had many floods. The 1977 flood covered both sides of the Allegheny Front. 40-41 were annulled for several days and as the airliner flew over Harrisburg I could see the brown, muddy waters of the Juniata flowing into the darker waters of the Susquehanna from Sunbury. The two streams stayed separate for several miles.

Phil Mulligan

Two of my uncles were coal miners, one in a deep mine and the other in strip mines. Both contracted anthrasilicosis and eventually succumbed to its effects. Both received "black lung" benefits. The one who worked underground received $45 a month for his 20-some years "down the pit," while the other received $120 a month for his 56 years of work above ground!

The future for coal?

On November 6, 2020 (three days after Election Day), after months of constant verbal bashing of the coal industry, Peabody Energy Stock (NYSE: BTU) was around $1.17 a share.

Today, around two years after they said they were going to force the coal industry out of business, Peabody Energy is around $26.57 a share. That’s about 22X the money. See for yourself. Look up the stock BTU on a five year scale.

That is a better payday than you would have had if you had bought Moderna stock before it became publicly known that they would be a leader in the development of vaccine.

In the same time span I cited for Peabody, Exxon Mobil went from 33 to 106. That is good compared to most of the rest of the market, but way less than coal.

Does anybody really think fossil fuels are finished?

If you don’t by now recognize the game that is being played with the fossil fuels industries, you have a Constitutional Right to remain poor.

PC

Pcook,

My whole life I have always been fascinated by everything steam, so when it came time to find a career, it seemed like earning a living in the last major steam powered industry (the power Industry) was a great idea. That was 2008, when I look at the map of coal plants once I worked at today almost all of them are gone and or not burning coal anymore. It is quite shocking how well BTU's stock is actually doing considering how many plants have been shut down or are scheduled to shut down.

But even then, coal is a weird thing. BTU is Powder River Basin Coal (PRB) it is very low sulfur and mercury, so it used to be (and maybe still is) the most environmentally friendly choice for power plants. It is also found in seams 100ft deep that are easily strip mined so it is very cheap coal. So as the industry consolidates and starts to die out it is possible that BTU is actually benefitting as many smaller mines are going under but I doubt it is a sign of health in the industry.

PRB coal on the other hand is pretty nasty stuff, it is high in Calcium which when it gets wet starts to cure like concrete, releasing heat in the process. The stuff if not properly handled will spontaneously combust and pouring water on the fire actually makes it start to burn even more! The power plants that switched over to it used to joke that the stuff "burned real well everywhere but in the boiler!" Being low BTU you need to burn a lot more of it, handle a lot more of it and move a lot more of it.

Did the railroads ever use PRB coal especially the ones out west? It would be the last stuff I would ever want to use if I was a railroad museum. But it is possible the big roads like UP were better equipped to handle it. Due to its ability to spontaneously combust it is not something you want to keep around without well trained individuals.

Years back I came across a lab that was experimenting with PRB coal, they made the mistake of ordering it all in early and stored it outside in a pile. One day it started smoldering and catching fire. They say you are supposed to compact it hard to starve it of air but of course the guys managing the scene insisted in pouring water on it which only made things worse. Fortunately the pile wasn't that big and I never saw what came of it but it was a big mess.

I doubt the railroads used it for their steam power.

Seems the PRB Coal usage didn't start until the 1970s and really took off in the early 1980s. The low BTU content of the coal seems to have limited its use until Clean Air Act requirements came into effect. The low sulfur content then attracted power plants to use that coal as it offset the need for additional costly air pollution controls.

What we know as PRB coal isn't much better than lignite. Northern Pacific used an almost-lignite coal that was taken from NP company strip mines at Coalstrip, Montana. Using that stuff was why the later NP steam power had such huge grate areas.

Union Pacific had a company mine at Rock Springs, Wyoming, which was probably the equivalent of PRB coal, if not actually in the PRB.

Howard P.

The other factor people who aren't rail historians tend to forget:
It took the construction of the "Orin Cut-Off," planned in 1976 and finally built in 1979 by Burlington Northern, to make mass consumption of PRB coal by utilities economically feasible. The C&NW was supposed tro partner in the project but withdrew due to lack of funds; they later bought trackage rights which carried over to Union Pacific after UP merged the C&NW.

I've been told by speculating analysts that had BN not built the Orin Cut-Off--at the time the largest RR line expansion in the nation in decades--then the power companies would have found a way to build it FOR BN and/or UP, so important was PRB coal to keeping coal-burning plants operating in the face of increasing environmental standards and regulation. But, as others have said/implied, it's very-low-sulfur "burnable dirt." Look at all the DEF in truck stops and auto parts stores, and you'll understand why that's become critical to power plant survival. (I, raised around anthracite and hard bituminous in Pennsylvania, once saw the spilled contents of a PRB hopper, and said aloud "What the hell is THIS cr*p?!?!?")

Ha! I was raised in the vicinity of Utah's coal mines (good steam coal, and much better smelling than PA coal) where the coal is glossy, jet black, and on my parent's first trip to Strasburg, they both pointed to the pile of dusty dark grey crap masquerading as coal, and said "What is that?"

'Trains Magazine' had a special issue on coal about 10 or 15 years ago which among other things contained an excellent article on the history of the Powder River Basin's development and the construction of the 'joint line', or Orin Subdivision. BN didn't plan or build it until after it became apparent that multiple large coal companies were snapping up leases and planning multiple large mines in eastern Wyoming (the northern end of the joint line was originally built as a spur to the Belle Ayr mine, at the cost of Amax Coal), and even then the plan to build the new line and upgrade the rest of the railroad to handle the surge of new traffic was very contentious, if I recall correctly two of BN's directors resigned in protest after the board voted for the plan.

In addition to being low sulphur PRB coal is very cheap to mine, the seams are very thick and close to the surface. This and the economics of unit train operation make it attractive to faraway power plants. Here's a price comparison of the various American coal regions for the final quarter of 2022.

https://www.eia.gov/coal/markets/