Symposium registration was sent out the first of the week to all Coal Bits recipients and completed forms are being returned at a rapid pace.  A lot of requests have been made for the actual agenda and I’m sorry to report that the agenda probably won’t be available until the week before Symposium start-up date.  If you need registration forms, please let us know at: sdavison@wvcoal.com

Rising gas prices are the elephant in the room that no one is talking about. With 87 octane gasoline now around $3 a gallon throughout the country, we can expect to start seeing increased prices for the delivery of goods and services, as UPS, FedEx, railroads and even airplanes feel the fuel cost pinch.

Cowlitz County in Washington state is across the Columbia River from Portland, Ore., which promotes mass transit and urban density and is a green reproach to the rest of us. Recently, Cowlitz did something that might make Portland wonder whether shrinking its carbon footprint matters. Cowlitz approved construction of a coal export terminal from which millions of tons of U.S. coal could be shipped to Asia annually.

By BILL RANEY, PRESIDENT

West Virginia Coal Association

It appears Barack Obama didn’t learn anything from his resounding defeat this past November. In fact, it appears he and his administration are “doubling-down’ on their efforts to ram through their radical anti-job agenda. If they can’t do it by passing legislation, they seem determined to bypass the Constitution altogether and impose their agenda through over-reaching regulation and rule-making.

CHARLESTON – Today’s announced closure of AK Steel’s Ashland Coke Plant is yet another example of the arrogance of the Obama Administration and the U.S. EPA. The closure of the the coke plant will put some 263 people out of work at a time when the nation’s reported unemployment rate is approaching 10 percent and many estimates place the real rate at nearly 15 percent.

According to the company, the decision to close the plant is the result of significantly higher operational costs related to the EPA’s imposition of increasingly stringent regulations.

“As a result, the total per-ton cost of coke produced by the plant is significantly higher than all other sources of coke for the company,” AK Steel said in its news release.