Freshly baked coal thread, with the coal baked up in mother earth under extreme pressure and heat for tens to hundreds of millions of years. In fact, heat is a much more important factor in the coalification process than time is.There can be bituminous rank coals that are tens of millions of years old and mere lignite coals that are hundreds of millions of years old due to differences in underground heat.This thread is dedicated to the amazing Illinois Coal Basin: all bituminous, Carboniferous (specifically Pennsylvanian) in age, and energy dense albeit high in sulfur, which is readily mediated by scrubbers in coal-fired power plants.Illinois coal is weathering America's coal production downturn remarkably well thanks to foreign markets, like in Asia and South America, wanting it. Coal is easily shipped via Mississippi River coal barges down to the Gulf of Mexico (or is it the Gulf of America now?) for transfer to oceangoing coal barges.
>>2194553175% of Illinois counties are underlain by coal beds. The Illinois Basin is the largest basin of bituminous rank coals in the USA, even bigger in its total bituminous coal tonnage than the Appalachian Basin.
>>21945676>75% of Illinois counties are underlain by coal beds.so technically if Illinois was nuked by a futuristic orbital space laser weapon 75% of the state would turn into a fire stage for the next hundred years or so at least?
Sunrise Coal in southern Indiana might make a comeback after a year of layoffs.https://www.coalage.com/departments/breaking-news/hallador-signs-exclusive-agreement-with-data-center-developer/Sunrise Coal is publicly traded under the name Hallador Energy. I wonder if it's stock price will rise due to this. But it probably already has risen, since this news is more than a week old.Either way, the hungry data centers and AI may lead to a renaissance in American coal production and use.
>>21945698The coal is 500+ feet deep, so you'd have to nuke away or laser away that much overburden to ignite the coal.
>>21945676>>21945676then why is most of the coal mined in the US mined in Wyoming?
>>21945718future black lung award winners
>>21945727Almost every case of black lung nowadays occurs in smokers. The smoke puts sticky tar in the lungs and the inhaled coal dust mixes with the tar to produce a kind of cement in the lungs.Coal miners who don't smoke never get black lung anymore because the air quality is vastly improved in coal mines compared to in the old days of continuous and longwall mining, which is when black lung really started: around the 1950s with the switch from conventional (blasting) to continuous mining. Those spinning heads on continuous miners and longwall shears put out way more dust than the old methods of using picks and shovels or blasting the coal to break the seam into rocks.
>>21945724Because Powder River Basin Coal, in Wyoming, is low in sulfur, and in the early 90s an amendment to the Clean Air Act of 1970 went into effect that greatly damaged the Illinois coal industry, which supplied much higher energy but also higher sulfur coals. Wyoming Powder River Basin coal is subbituminous in rank, having around 8,000 BTUs per pound, while Illinois Basin coal is bituminous in rank and ranges from 11,000 to 15,000 BTUs per pound.Basically, coal-burning power utilities didn't want to pay for sulfur scrubbers and so they switched, in the 90s, to Powder River Basin coal, but other countries are more than willing to buy up high energy Illinois Basin coals.Also, Wyoming coals are in terrible decline, a decline far exceeding Appalachian or recent Illinois Basin coal production declines, because export markets are the new big thing for American coal and low energy Wyoming coal is not worth the cost to export.
>>21945724Just look at that chart and know that a decade ago, Wyoming produced between 400 and 500 million tons of coal per annum. Their production is down by almost half. Higher energy coals, which are more attractive to import by foreign countries, are having less steep declines and, if Trump helps out, could see production increases for export markets.
>>21944365Bullish for gold
>>21945909interdasting and informative. very rare for cmmg.which coal companies are the key exporters of your 'high btu' Illinois coal? I will look into them. I recall reading one of the major power river basin producers is moving out, now I know why.
>>21946132Foresight Energy is the biggest, but they're privately owned. Prairie State is also privately owned.I think Alliance Resource Partners has a mine in the Illinois Basin, but they also mine for coal in Appalachia. So I am not sure if there are any good investments, for stockholders, in the Illinois Basin. You have to be a private investor: big money.
Ghana's military repels illegal miners from attack at mine. https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/ghana-army-says-7-illegal-miners-killed-firefight-anglogold-ashanti-mine-2025-01-19/
>>21945919IB coal will be very popular among foreign buyers on account of how cheap it will be, if it's still being mined, that is.Power utilities have already shutting down units in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, North Carolina and Tennessee--all of which were buyers of IB coal--and Duke, AEP, etc, have announced retirement dates for a significant number of coal plants which won't be replaced with coal. Gibson in Indiana, the single biggest purchaser of IB coal, will be completely offline by 2038.IB coal has always been more difficult to mine on account of its notoriously weak roof rock, but now is steadily losing its traditional patrons. Maybe start sucking some Chang and Gupta dick for favorable trading.
>www.bnnbloomberg.ca/video/shows/market-call/2025/01/15/jordan-zinbergs-top-picks-goeasy-mainstreet-and-source-energy-servicesSandbros.......he's calling for $30 shle
>>21946502>Alliance Resource PartnersI already have their stock, but wish I had found them in 2020.
>>21946645>Maybe start sucking some Chang and Gupta dick for favorable trading.Exactly this. My mouth is wide open. I am originally an Illinois boy and love the state, lumps and all. Southern Illinois, where the big coal mines and the best coal are, is gorgeous and a very nice place to live.Suffice it to say I believe in the future of IB coal. I want it to thrive. The Illinois Basin could power China and India indefinitely because it's coal is high quality and ever so abundant.