The Quad Report

By Kennedy Maize

Wyoming Republican Gov. Mark Gordon wants to ship the Cowboy State’s plentiful coal to Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea, according to a recent account in Cowboy State Daily. Gordon recently returned from an Asian trip with what the statewide online news service calls “an idealistic vision.”

Wyoming is the nation’s largest coal producer, mostly from the enormous Powder River Basin, used to fuel coal-fired power plants around the U.S. With coal plants closing due to aging, economics, and climate concerns, the state is looking for new markets.

Gordon said developing a coal export terminal on the Gulf (of Mexico) coast could facilitate export to those countries that now get their coal from Australia and Indonesia. The daily reported, “Gordon said both Japan and Taiwan are interested in facilitating more energy trade with the United States and specifically investing in Gulf of America ports to cut shipping times by as much as half….”

Either the governor’s or the Asian nations’ geography appears a bit strange if they envision shipping Wyoming coal to the Gulf Coast and from there to Japan, South Korea, or Taiwan.

Coal already ships from Seattle, which would provide for a much shorter haul than from Wyoming to the Gulf. Gilette to Seattle is about 1,000 miles. The sea route from Seattle to Taipei is 6,000 miles. Total mileage: around 7,000 miles.

Gilette to New Orleans, which also has a coal terminal, is 1,600 miles. Shipping from New Orleans to Colon, Panama, on the Atlantic side of the canal, adds another 1,500 miles. From Panama City to Taipei, with a slow trip through the canal, would then involve another sea journey of some 9,500 miles. Total mileage: some 12,600 miles.

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West Virginia coal miners are challenging the Trump administration’s move to cut back on federal black lung disease treatments. A U.S. District Court judge May 7 heard testimony from two miners with the disease (“coal workers’ pneumoconiosis”). They seek to reverse the decision by the Department of Health and Human Services to gut the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, laying off two-thirds of the agency’s staff.

Long-term exposure to coal dust causes the deadly disease. NIOSH reviews black lung cases and job assignments in order to help miners, under the nation’s key mine safety law signed in 1969.

Both miners with over 30 years’ experience – Harry Wiley and Matthew Ward – have black lung and are still working underground. They filed a class action lawsuit against HHS, saying that a move earlier this year to lay off NIOSH workers has made it impossible for them to proceed with their request to shift jobs to a part of their mines where coal dust is a lesser problem. The NIOSH program is called the “Part 90 Low Dust Transfer Program,” established by law and administered in NIOSH’s Morgantown, W.Va., office. The two miners said they sent X-rays and other documents to the office, but it was effectively shut down by the HHS layoffs and could not review their job transfer requests.

A notice on NIOSH’s “Coal Workers’ Health and Safety Program” website posted on Feb. 24 says, “Due to the reduction in force across NIOSH, the NIOSH Coal Workers’ Health Surveillance Program (CWHSP) is not providing any new medical screenings to coal miners or accepting any new requests for review of medical information to determine coal miners’ rights for transfer to low-dust jobs.”

Attorney Sam Brown Petsonk, representing the miners, told the court, “Congress requires these programs to be there for our miners. You can’t just shut them down. You can’t just ignore the mandates of Congress.”

WVA Metronews reported, “Two different NIOSH epidemiologists, Dr. Anthony ‘Scott’ Laney and Dr. Noemi Hall testified to the rapid progression of black lung in miners who remain in a dusty workplace.” The doctors said Morgantown is the only NIOSH office in the nation with the specialized knowledge of black lung. They said they had been put on administrative leave with a June 2 separation date.

Judge Irene C. Berger of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Western Virginia said after the three-hour hearing that she would rule on the request for an injunction against HHS “soon.”

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Owners and operators of U.S. coal-fired electric power plants are facing fear, uncertainty, and doubt as they look toward the future of their operations in Trumplandia. Some examples:

• * Oregon-based PacifiCorp, which operates in Oregon, Washington, California, Wyoming, Idaho, and Utah, and is owned by Warren Buffett, in April announced it was relooking at plans to walk away from its two Utah coal plants in 2031 and 2032 and its Wyoming plant in 2037. E&E News reported, “Western power giant PacifiCorp is no longer committing to the retirement of several of its large coal plants before the 2040s, a reflection of the policy uncertainty under the Trump administration.”
• * Bucking the trend, Colorado rural electric cooperative generation and transmission utility Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association is going ahead with planned plant closures. In its resource plan filed with the Colorado Public Utilities Commission April 11, Tri-State said it has not changed the pace of its move away from coal. It will close its three-unit Craig plant starting this year and ending by 2028 and its Springerville unit 3 in Arizona during 2031. Colorado Democratic Gov. Jared Polis has called Trump’s series of executive orders aimed at aiding coal “federal overreach.” Tri-State spokesperson Lee Boughey told The Colorado Sun, “We are evaluating the executive orders, Tri-State’s preferred plan reflects previously announced retirements, driven primarily by economics for Craig Station.”
• * The federal government-owned Tennessee Valley Authority – among the nation’s largest coal consumers – planned to retire its four large coal-fired power plants in Kentucky and Tennessee by 2035. Then in late March, Trump fired two TVA board members, leaving the agency’s board without a quorum, and long-time CEO Jeff Lyash, whom Trump despised, retired. Trump’s grievance? He loves coal. A month later in a financial conference call, new CEO Don Moul said, “We are reevaluating the end of life study that we did on our coal fleet, and we’re taking a hard look at our asset strategy with regard to the regulatory environment in front of us.”

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