Met Coal Still Fueling Growth in Pennsylvania Coal Industry

 

 

By David Hurst

February 25, 2019 - The construction of a coal cleaning facility in Pennsylvania's Shade Township is a sign of the continued rebound in the nation’s metallurgical coal market and the fact that mining companies such as LCT Energy are benefiting from the trend.

The Johnstown-based company’s roster recently showed 180 employees – double the number LCT carried several years ago. By summer, that total will likely grow to 240 – a record high for the 10-year-old company, President Mark Tercek said.

 

LCT Energy’s cleaning plant in Shade Township, shown on Feb. 4, 2019, is expected to go online in May and will employ 15 to 20 people.

Photo by Todd Berkey

 

 

“That’s the largest we’ve ever been.  And we feel good about it,” Tercek said, noting that the market looks strong enough to support the company’s growth over the coming year.

LCT Energy is one of several mining companies in the region whose activity has ramped up over the past three years, as the demand for higher quality “met-coal” has risen to meet global markets for steel and new construction.

Corsa Coal has opened the Acosta and Horning mines over the past 18 months and showed in its third-quarter financial report that total metallurgical coal sales were up 22 percent through September, compared to the year prior.

Rosebud Mining started working in the Cresson Mine early last year and has excavation to get the site to full operation, a company executive said.

Rosebud operates the Madison Mine in Jackson Township, Mine 78 outside Windber, and coal processing plants in Paint and Portage townships as well as the new Cresson Mine.

In all, approximately 125 of the company’s employees work in those Cambria and Somerset counties operations – more than half of them at the Madison Mine, Rosebud Executive Vice President Jim Barker said.

If all goes well, the crew of approximately 20 miners could make their way through underground “adverse geology” materials in the coming months and begin digging into the main coal seam in the spring, he said.

“We could build up to 35 people over the course of the year,” Barker said.

There’s a global demand to increase production at sites such as the Cresson deep mine, he said.

Supporting Steel 

Less than 10 percent of the nation’s coal supply is classified as metallurgical grade, and the supply is relied on for steel production across the country.

“Whether its integrated mills, vehicle sales in North America ... new construction domestically or overseas, the economy is doing well,” Barker said. 

“And when you consume steel, the companies we sell to do well and it trickles back to us.”

The Cambria-Somerset region, and a small surrounding area, is viewed as the only source of bituminous metallurgical coal in Pennsylvania, state Department of Health spokesman Neil Shader said.

Demand for the rest of the state’s coal reserves – much of it a lower-quality bituminous “steam coal” – has been in low demand in recent years, impacted by a decreasing number of coal-fired power plants and an abundance of competing resources, including natural gas.

There are other efforts underway in the region to increase metallurgical coal production.

LCT is working to open the Rustic Ridge Mine near Donegal, Westmoreland County. As planned, the mine would open later this year, about six miles west of the Somerset County line.

Excavation would occur through parts of Westmoreland and Fayette counties. 

‘Clean’ and By Rail

LCT’s cleaning plant in Shade Township is expected to go online in May and will likely employ 15 to 20 people at first, Tercek said.

“It’s going to allow us to do all of our coal cleaning in-house, rather than turning to someone else to wash our coal,” he said.

Nearly 31/2 miles of railroad track are being put back into use to allow up to 40,000 tons of processed coal to be hauled away daily to customers – as much as 10,000 tons at a time, Tercek said.

By comparison, one truck hauls 23 tons.

 

“It would take 1,700 trucks to haul that amount of material,” Tercek said. “That’s going to allow us to avoid putting a lot of trucks off of the roads in that area.”