August 14, 2024 - A symposium bringing numerous coal industry professionals to southern West Virginia is also working to reduce mining injuries and highlighting how the coal industry is changing and growing economies on both the national and international levels.

The Bluefield Coal Symposium opened Monday at the Chuck Mathena Center and soon became a center of activity with seminars and major speakers in the coal industry. It was continuing Tuesday with an emphasis on mine safety and reaching the goal of zero injuries.

"We have upwards of 200 attendees," said Jeff Disibbio, president and CEO of the Chamber of Commerce of the Two Virginias. "That includes the number of speakers that we have here as well. Some are the preeminent folks in their fields, preeminent folks in the the coal and energy fields."

The last Bluefield Coal Symposium was held back in 2012. The plan now is to reestablish the annual event and keep bringing coal industry representatives to the region.

"As we all know, Covid changed the world for a few years which put these type of educational opportunities for the mining industry on hold, but now we're trying to get back in the swing of things," Disibbio said. "This was a successful event for us for a lot of years. We trained a lot of folks to be able to continue in the mining industry and this is our first step back into that, so we want to make sure to make it a more regular event because mining operators need professional training credits just like the other professionals in the world."

The Bluefield Coal Symposium and the upcoming Bluefield Coal Show are both important industry events, but they have different purposes. The Bluefield Coal Show brings hundreds of coal industry representatives from across the nation to southern West Virginia.

"The coal show, which will be in September of next year, is actually an introduction of new equipment, it's new philosophies, it's people doing business-to-business sales, it's a lot of industry folks who are getting together to actually work together as far as buying and selling equipment; so it has a larger impact on coal industry itself in the terms of dollars and cents," Disibbio said.

The ongoing symposium focuses more on continuing education for mining professionals.

"But this type of show is more along the educational lines," Disibbio said. "We're advancing the knowledge and educational level of the coal mine industry through this event where the other is sales based."

Education about the coal industry also extends to people who might become part of it one day. Georgene Robertson, who represents the Women in Mining Education Foundation and works for the Coal-Mac company, said the foundation provides materials for teachers with classes from elementary school to high school.

"We have a display here promoting our Women in Mining Education Foundation. We provide lesson plans for teachers to use in their classrooms to teach about mining," Robertson said. "It's very helpful for teachers to have a resource they can go to and have lesson plans planned out, so they just pop it up based on the grade they teach, and they can utilize that in their classrooms. Mining has changed so much and its automated. You need to be educated and well-versed to be a coal miner. It's not like it used to be."

The Chamber of Commerce of the Two Virginias and CoalZoom.com hope to make the symposium an annual event once again.

"Our plan is to bring it back next year, hopefully bigger and better than ever," Disibbio said.

The symposium's emphasis Tuesday was mining safety. Today's agenda will focus on the direction the coal industry is taking in general and on coal's future on both the national and international stage.

"I think what we're seeing from the numbers these folks have been telling us is that the mining industry, although it's prevalent here, it's growing tremendously outside the United States as well. We're seeing a great deal of push for exports; so a lot of our local companies just here in the region are doing a tremendous amount of exporting that they've not really had to do in the past," Disibbio said. "It's an expanding world, but it's also shrinking at the same time. Businesses are becoming reliant not just on local vendors across the world. It creates a different dynamic for us, so we have to address that so we can stay in the forefront and keep southern West Virginia and Southwest Virginia relevant."