Coal losing its luster due to water transportation problems
January 27, 08 by TheFleetIf you're new here, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
By JUDY PASTERNAK | Source: WCF Courier (Cedar Falls, IA)
A more immediate challenge is transportation, from missing links in the rail routes to silted-up Great Lakes shipping channels, which raise concerns that coal might not be so simple to get at after all.
“Can coal deliver?” asked Gary Hunt, president of Global Energy Advisors, a Sacramento, Calif.-based unit of Global Energy Decisions. “The answer is no,” he said, not without “billions and billions” spent on improvements for mining capacity, railroads and shipping.
We Energies, which provides electricity in Wisconsin and Michigan, said it had faced at least $45 million in higher fuel costs as a result of rail disruptions. Like other producers in the Upper Midwest, the company tried to find relief by shipping coal across the Great Lakes. But lake channels have silted up, creating a “dredging crisis,” in the words of James H.I. Weakley, president of the Lake Carriers’ Association.
The Lake Erie port of Dunkirk, N.Y. — site of a coal-fired power plant — closed to shipping in 2005. A freighter ran aground at the Lake Huron port of Saginaw, Mich., last year. With ships loading 6,000 to 9,000 tons less than their capacity in order to stay afloat, in the shallower channels, coal-cargo totals on the lakes this year are down 8 percent from a year ago, the carriers’ group said.
