The USGS report has some good news for the mining industry

June 9, 2026

The folks in our region who have been around for a good while — the seasoned citizens — remember the days when the mining industry provided so much benefit to the area. Younger folks, however, are likely not aware of the benefits provided by the mining industry.

The Bluefield railyard was filled with Norfolk and Western Railway coal cars. The full ones were bound for Norfolk and other places where that coal was wanted and needed, and the many empty cars were waiting to be moved to the coal mines to be refilled. Area towns and cities were booming, with Bluefield’s population totaling somewhere between 23,000 and 29,000, and visitors from all over the coal fields were coming there to spend some time.

There were many stores, restaurants and movie theaters. And they were crowded, especially on the weekends. Just after 5:00 p.m. on weekdays there were two lanes of bumper-to-bumper traffic on Bland Street and Federal Street crawling out of downtown trying to get home.

It was a great time for the region, and the coal mining industry provided a necessary fuel as well as a great economic benefit, not only to this region, but to the entire country.

And then the change started. Some new fuels were beginning to be used, and some existing ones were being used more than before, making coal mining less important. And later, the global warming/climate change mania came along, and the idea of using coal became a no-no, as it was supposed to be increasing the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, which the “experts” said was dangerous. 

While there is still a market for coal, and new uses of it are developing, the industry is a mere shadow of its former self. And it likely will increase some now that these new uses are being found and the fallacy of the idea that fossil fuels producing too much CO2 is being openly talked about and scientifically countered.

We also have seen recently efforts on the Trump administration’s part to benefit the coal industry, including a new coal-burning electric plant in West Virginia.

So, this and a recent news release provide a bright spot for the mining industry.

Other substances — minerals — have been in use for a long time, but are now playing a more significant role in our lives. They are used as fuel, in construction, and for other valuable purposes. We use them to build urban infrastructure and in household objects, such as for plumbing and electricity.

Much of the mineral supply we use here comes from other countries, and the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management is determined and working to increase our domestic supply of these critical materials.

One of those valuable minerals is lithium, and the most dominant suppliers of it currently are Australia and China. But there is a piece of good news for the Appalachian region regarding lithium. 

The United States Geological Survey (USGS) announced in April the following; “The Appalachian region of the eastern United States contains an estimated 2.3 million metric tons of undiscovered, economically recoverable lithium, enough to replace 328 years of U.S. imports at last year’s level.”

Wow! The USGS report continues: “So how much lithium have they found in them thar hills?? The estimated 2.3 million metric tons of lithium oxide in the Appalachian region would be enough lithium for batteries in: 1.6 million grid-scale batteries large enough to stabilize an electric grid; 130 million electric vehicles; 180 billion laptops, or a 1,000-year supply of laptops for the world (at 2025 levels); 500 billion cellphones, or 60 cellphones for each person on earth.”

“In other words, enough to make the U.S. energy independent for centuries, or at least until a new technology replaces lithium batteries.” And the USGS offers that 2.3 million metric tons may be a conservative estimate, and could possibly be as much as 7.4 million metric tons.

Not so long ago, the U.S. was the dominant lithium producer in the world. Now, three decades later, we may begin to reclaim that distinction.

The USGS report did not say exactly where these deposits are, although they are known to exist in North Carolina, South Carolina, Maine, and New Hampshire. So how much of an effect lithium mining might have on our immediate area is now currently not known. But USGS said that information covering the Appalachians from Maryland to Alabama will be published later. 

This discovery, along with the “go get it” attitude of the federal government to extract and use our own mineral supplies, hold great promise, both economically, and from a practical perspective for the country.

It is one element in the effort to bring back to America as much as possible of those products and the jobs that produce them that we willingly allowed to be moved to other countries for the last 30 or so years. In doing this we can create many jobs and reduce or eliminate high prices for products we purchase from other countries.

The idea of producing as many of the things Americans want and need as possible is a sound economic and patriotic idea.

The War on Coal couldn’t erase industry’s history or its future

  

The story of coal in West Virginia is a long one, with ups and downs. And while the industry and individuals in it have suffered, coal has survived a concerted effort to kill it completely.

 

Coal has been in use by humans for hundreds of years. In the early years, most coal used in the American colonies came from England or Nova Scotia. But during the American Revolution, the wartime needs spurred “small American coal-mining operations such as those in Virginia on the James River near Richmond. By the early 1830s mining companies had emerged along the Ohio, Illinois, and Mississippi rivers and in the Appalachian region,” according to the Encyclopedia Britannica.

 

Coal for many years was the major fuel in producing electricity, and more recently, through gasification and liquefaction, is used to produce gaseous and liquid fuels that are easily transported by pipeline and conveniently stored in tanks. 

 

The Green Energy mania, spurred on by often exaggerated, funding-oriented “scientific” data dealing with the increase and dangers of CO2, and the need for America to increase its world-leading CO2 reduction efforts, produced the foolish War on Coal of former-President Barack Obama’s administration.

 

This myopic governmental overreach put thousands of Americans out of work and severely damaged state and local economies, but thrilled the Green Energy crowd.

 

The coal industry was already well down the path of being phased out in the natural transition from coal and other fossil fuels to efficient, less-expensive, cleaner and plentiful natural gas, and also the currently inefficient, but preferred renewable sources, such as wind and solar energy.

 

How much more sensible it would have been to allow these natural changes to gradually work their way into being without the heavy damage caused by this irrational War.

 

Years ago, the coal industry had already lost many jobs of miners and other industry workers through the impact of mechanization. And the government efforts to end coal as a viable and needed product further damaged coal mining regions like those of southern West Virginia and southwestern Virginia.

 

However, other nations still are using and need coal, and the industry has sputtered along filling those needs, and still exists today. Not surprisingly, these nations far out-pace the United States in CO2 emissions, but hardly get anything like the official grief that America received from the “green energy at any cost” crusade.

 

Even supporters of the coal industry understand that burning coal is a significant source of pollution, and development of cleaner ways to utilize this useful and plentiful resource are on-going. While coal is now responsible for only 11 percent of electricity production in the United States, clean coal technologies have produced some significant improvements in coal usage, which are welcomed.

 

Turning coal into synfuels, which are gases and liquids that produce less pollutants when burned than does pure coal, is one way that coal can still be a useful product. South Africa has been converting coal to liquids for decades. Other gases and liquids derived from coal function as chemicals in the production of other products.

 

A plant in North Dakota converts coal into synthetic natural gas, called “syngas.” Electricity and hydrogen are made from syngas. And a company in Wheeling, West Virginia is now working to find additional alternative uses for coal.

 

Wheeling’s Touchstone Research Laboratories is working to develop high-value-added coal raw materials that can make several products, such as carbon foams, graphites, graphene and carbon fiber.

 

A strong, fireproof carbon foam, called CFOAM, has already been developed by Touchstone, and is used in the aerospace industry to make molds for manufacturing carbon fiber rocket nozzles, and in science for the most powerful telescope in history, the James Webb Space Telescope.

 

As new uses for coal emerge, new interest in West Virginia coal follows.  Governor Jim Justice announced in his State of the State address that Ramaco Carbon will be opening a new research facility in South Charleston’s Technology Park.

 

Ramaco CEO and chairman Randall Atkins, said that the company will use that facility until it outgrows it, and then expand to other locations in the state. The opening of that facility, as with so many other things, has been delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic.

 

Ramaco announced in June that it has entered into a five-year coal-to-products cooperative research and development agreement with Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the largest U.S. Department of Energy science and energy laboratory, to study converting coal to high-value products and materials.

 

There is global interest in clean coal technology, as well. In 2019, this sector invested $3.7 billion, and projections say that figure will surpass $4.6 billion by 2027, with a compound annual growth rate of 2.9 percent.

 

No one expects that coal will ever again enjoy the huge employment figures or the quantities of mined resources of years past. But there are bright spots on the horizon for using West Virginia and Virginia coal that will offer direct and indirect employment to hundreds of people, and produce tax revenues for state and local governments.

 

We would be further down that path today, had President Obama had the foresight to reimagine coal usage a decade ago.

Here’s some good news on climate change and the U.S. energy picture

Was it a breakdown of distribution components? Did information editors snooze through this big news? What was it that caused the recent important news about climate change to not be widely distributed?

Normally, when data show a new hottest year on record; or a big increase over the previous month, or the same month in the previous year; or represent a sequence of warming months or years, that’s a big story. But not this time. What’s up with that?

Well, the answer is that the climate change news did not fit with the climate change narrative preferred by those who promote cataclysmic damage to the Earth’s atmosphere unless we make dramatic, inconvenient, expensive, harmful, and virtually useless changes to the way we live and work.

Since the Little Ice Age ended in the 1880s the Earth has warmed by about 0.8 degrees C, a level of warming that many regard as serious, even catastrophic. However, that same approximate level of warming occurred three times prior to this one, in the Minoan, Roman and Medieval warming periods. Somehow, the Earth managed to not blow up, and its plant and animal life survived. And the fact that Earth survived runs contrary to the manic warnings of the alarmist faction about our fate under such conditions.

The recent news that hardly anyone is aware of demonstrates how Earth’s temperatures fluctuate; alternately rising and falling, over varying lengths of time, and has occurred for at least thousands of years.

The most recent available data comes from the GISTEMP Team, 2018:GISS Surface Temperature Analysis. The source for this report is NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, and the data shows that from February of 2016 to February of 2018, global average temperatures fell by 0.56 degrees C. That was an even larger drop than the previous two-year drop from 1982-1984, when the global temperatures dropped by 0.47 degrees C.

The recent temperature drop, called the Big Chill, represents the reversal of about 70 percent of the previous 0.8 degree C increase in global temperatures over the last approximately 120 years. This is important; however, two years of lower temperatures are not sufficient to label it a complete reversal of the warming trend. But it does demonstrate the changeable nature of global temperatures.

Other relevant information not widely reported consists of an analysis of computer climate models as designed by the climate scientists on the alarmist side of things. Writing for Investors Business Daily, Nic Lewis’ and Judith Curry’s study shows the alarmists models are tilted upward on the temperature scale. The planet, they say, is far less sensitive to increases in CO2 than the climate models predict. The result is that Earth will warm less than the models predict, even if the levels of CO2 we put into the atmosphere do not decrease.

Thus, the global warming scare that we are continually being beaten up with is not currently a looming danger. Instead, it is an exaggerated picture of normal temperature fluctuations.

The majority of the information media, which largely sides with the predictions of catastrophe for our environment, mostly reports information about climate when it suits their political perspective.

* * * * *

On the energy front, there is also good news. Bloomberg Markets reports, “Selling more than two million barrels a day of U.S. crude overseas may soon be the new normal.”

The U.S. exported 2.33 million barrels a day in the third week of April, which is the highest export number in the last 25 years, according to the Energy Information Administration. That is a significant increase from earlier in the month, when average exports were 1.76 million barrels a day. U.S. total output has increased to 10.6 million barrels a day, Bloomberg reported.

This increase is attributed to the shale production revolution, which largely comes from light, sweet West Texas crude.

The U.S. is moving from the world’s largest importer of crude oil, and is about to displace Russia as the largest producer of crude in the world.

The coal picture, while improved from the over-reaching Obama administration, does not look as good as the oil picture. However, a new discovery could produce some positive impacts.

The American Geosciences Institute notes: "Rare-earth elements (REEs) are used as components in high technology devices, including smart phones, digital cameras, computer hard disks, fluorescent and light-emitting-diode (LED) lights, flat screen televisions, computer monitors, and electronic displays. Large quantities of some REEs are used in clean energy and defense technologies."

A new project with the goal of being able to extract rare earth elements from acid mine drainage at coal mine sites in the country holds some promise. West Virginia University and the National Energy Technology Laboratory are focusing on developing a less expensive method for extraction, and to increase domestic supplies of these elements, which now are primarily available only from China.

If successful, this project will not only provide a strong domestic supply of the increasingly valuable and useful elements, but will also have a positive impact on the waste produced from past and present coal mining operations.

President Obama’s policies failing to revive the American economy

More important than the lofty generalities candidate Barack Obama fed his fans about healing the planet, slowing the rise of the oceans, ending political divisions in America, and ushering in an era of hope and change, as President he and his administration gave Americans strong assurances of better things to come.

He promised to create five million new jobs just in the energy sector, and in promoting the $767 billion stimulus plan his economic advisors Christina Romer and Jared Bernstein predicted unemployment would not rise above 8 percent. In the first year of his presidency, Mr. Obama pledged to “cut the deficit we inherited in half by the end of my first term in office,” to “lift two million Americans from poverty,” and “jolt our economy back to life.”

The President told NBC’s Matt Lauer January of 2009, “If I don't have this done in three years, then there's gonna be a one-term proposition.”

Last week’s July jobs numbers show continued misery across the nation, again calling attention to Mr. Obama’s failure to deliver on his economic pledges. Since he didn’t “have this done in three years,” why is he running for re-election?

The unemployment rate ticked up to 8.3 percent, far above the 5.6 percent rate that his economic team predicted for July 2012 if Congress passed the $767 billion stimulus plan.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) report for July showed that 195,000 fewer people were working in the U.S. than in June. Further, the BLS figures showed that 150,000 more people became discouraged and dropped out of the labor force.

Nevertheless, Mr. Obama struggled to put a positive spin on these dismal numbers, boasting, “we tried our plan — and it worked.”

Really? Let’s review the results: Forty-two straight months of unemployment above 8 percent; 8.2 million people working part-time who want full-time work; a record 88 million Americans who are not in the labor force; 1.9 percent GDP growth in the past quarter; $5 trillion in new debt; the downgrading of the U.S. credit rating; 38 percent of Americans living paycheck to paycheck; 45 million Americans on food stamps; food prices continuing to increase dramatically; and the poverty level likely to rise to the highest level in nearly fifty years.

If this is what a successful Obama economic policy looks like, let’s go back to the Bush years, where those “top-down” economic policies Mr. Obama so loves to hate created 52 straight months of job creation, and an unemployment rate that never exceeded 6.3 percent following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, despite the attending chaos they caused. Oh, for the good old days.

The continued poor economy and dismal jobs pictures since he won the office he so aggressively sought are precisely what would we should expect from Mr. Obama’s big spending economic philosophy.

On the campaign trail, he said, “You grow an economy from the middle out, and from the bottom up. …When middle-class families have money in their pockets, they go out and buy that new car or that new appliance or the new computer for their kids or they go out to a restaurant – heaven forbid they take a vacation once in a while – and that money goes back into the economy and businesses do well because they’ve got more customers.” That same example applies to wealthy Americans.

The example supports leaving more money in the private economy, which is a point in favor of low income taxes for all. However, it omits a critical element: Before mom and dad can buy a new car or even a toaster, at least one of them has to have a job.

However, if they work in the coal industry or the space industry, or in a related business, thanks to the Obama administration there’s a good chance they either don’t have a job, or soon will lose it.

At a time of dangerously high unemployment, Mr. Obama’s jobs program focuses not on creating jobs, but on killing jobs. The coal industry is dying – or rather is being executed – as extreme air quality goals imposed by the Environmental Protection Agency force coal-fired generators to shut down, meaning consumers could see their electricity bills jump an estimated 40 to 60 percent in the next few years. The decreased demand for American coal shuts down mining and related companies, putting more people on the unemployment line.

His policies have produced high unemployment in Brevard County, Florida, the home of the Kennedy Space Center, which peaked in double digits, but now is about nine percent. That is somewhat lower than it otherwise would be because space industry workers had to leave the County to try to find work after the President scrapped the second manned moon mission in 2010.

In the grand scheme of things the jobs lost in the space and coal industries and in supporting businesses may be only a fraction of the total. But Mr. Obama should be held to account for policies that deliberately kill jobs in a time of already high unemployment.

This callous disregard for American jobs is not among the characteristics that voters should expect to find in their president.

Comments are invited

All pain and no gain: Manic regulation kills jobs, produces no benefits

In March of this year the federal Energy Information Administration (EIA) released data showing that in 2011 coal was responsible for 42 percent of U.S. power production, a little lower than years past, but coal still is the most commonly used fuel in producing domestic electricity.

Burning coal is dirty, but it is cleaner today than any time in the last 60  years. And mining coal is risky for workers, but so is commercial fishing, logging, flying airplanes, and farming/ranching, the four most dangerous occupations in the country. Yes, coal has its negatives, but so does every one of the energy sources suggested to replace it.

On the plus side, coal not only produces energy, it produces direct and indirect employment for hundreds of thousands of Americans, and billions in tax revenue from its production and sale, and from the income of industry businesses and workers.

Coal generates electricity in 48 states and is mined in 25 states. According to the National Mining Association (NMA) U.S. coal mining directly employs nearly 136,000 people, and the average coal miner earns $73,000 per year. For each coal mining job, an additional 3.5 jobs are created elsewhere in the economy. For example, 60,000 people work in coal-fired power plants, and thousands more work in the transportation industry delivering coal to customers. The NMA estimates that 50,000 new employees will be needed in coal mining over the next 10 years to meet demand and to replace retiring workers. And, coal is projected to be the dominant fuel for electricity generation in the U.S. through 2035, according to the EIA.

This information ought to be seriously considered when the vast army of government regulators is hard at work making life more expensive, but not necessarily better. It was clearly ignored when the Environmental Protection Agency developed the Utility MACT Rule, which establishes the maximum achievable control technology (MACT) standards for emissions of hazardous air pollutants from coal- and oil-fired power plants. Primarily, Utility MACT targets mercury emissions.

You remember mercury. It’s the poison contained in every one of the new miracle light bulbs, called CFLs, which Congress mandated to replace the popular, inexpensive and safe incandescent bulbs we have used for decades. It is also released by coal combustion and the EPA fears it will settle into water supplies and cause birth defects when consumed by pregnant women.

The National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA) recently commented on a study by the Competitive Enterprise Institute that disputes the EPA’s data. “The EPA's December 2000 determination that triggered the rule assumed that 7 percent of pregnant women in the United States have blood mercury concentrations exceeding the agency's reference dose. In reality, only 0.4 percent (one in every 250 pregnant women) had blood mercury levels exceeding the reference dose.”

“Furthermore, the EPA's reference dose is overly cautious: the EPA's reference dose is 1/15th the lowest exposure level associated with mild, subclinical effects in epidemiological studies,” the NCPA reports. “Finally, the EPA produces no evidence of mercury exposure at these levels having any effect on unborn children.”

The report also says “EPA estimates that each year 240,000 pregnant women in subsistence fishing households eat enough self-caught fish to endanger their children's cognitive or neurological health, yet the agency has yet to identify a single woman who fits this description.”

The EPA justifies implementing this rule by claiming that the public health benefits of limiting coal burning will be greater than the compliance costs. It claims the Rule will save $80 billion a year, but relies on achieving levels of particulate matter discharge well beyond levels generally recognized as safe.

Furthermore, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission projects the Rule will result in losing 81,000 megawatts of electricity generation, almost eight times the EPA’s estimate.

American coal plants are vastly cleaner than those in other countries, where pollution control is virtually non-existent. China now emits more mercury than the United States, India, and Europe combined, and mercury pollution wafts across the Pacific to foul our air and water. The EPA would better serve Americans if it regulated China’s coal burning.

Americans for Prosperity predicts American families and businesses will see electricity bills rise by an average of 12 percent nationwide and by as much as 24 percent in coal country, and this “burdensome regulation” will destroy over a million American jobs in the coming years.

The U.S. Senate had the opportunity last Wednesday to put a halt to this anti-coal, anti-common-sense scheme, but failed by a 53-46 vote.

Incomprehensibly, two coal-state senators, West Virginia Democrat Jay Rockefeller and Tennessee Republican Lamar Alexander, voted against the measure, along with four other Republicans. Clearly, Senators Rockefeller and Alexander have failed their constituents and their states.

The EPA grossly overstated the dangers of mercury from burning fossil fuels and grossly understated the harmful effects of Utility MACT on the public. These folks will not be satisfied until every detectable particle of every substance that at some level of concentration might be harmful to something or someone is eliminated from the Earth, and they are eager to force job losses and higher consumer costs on us trying to achieve that impossible goal.

Click here to comment