better than lost hills, page-4

Interesting article on the net re-another coal boom in Hinton
Marilyn Gray
Monday September 22, 2008

The announcement of plans to reopen the Obed Mountain Mine in 2009 is a sign of another coal boom in the area, said a local mineworkers union representative.
“This just shows the confidence in the markets,” said Brent Bish, president of the United Mineworkers Local 1656.
“Anybody that’s employed in the coal field has tons of opportunities right now,” said Bish. “Job security is probably better than it’s ever been.
“With more coal mines opening up it gives people more diversity with where they want to work.”
Obed will soon be the third operational coal mine in the Hinton region, in addition to the Coal Valley and Cardinal River/Cheviot mines.
While coal production in Hinton is on the upswing, this is nothing new for the area, said Bish.
“Hinton used to be all coal mines,” he said. “There were coal mines everywhere. That was back in the day when they used it for heating and everything else.”
A large reason for the first coal boom in the area was the mines’ close proximity to the railroads.

“They were selling [coal] to the railroads,” said Bish.
Many of the area’s mines closed in the late 1940s when locomotives were switching over from coal-powered steam to diesel.
“They went to diesel locomotives and that’s what killed a lot of them,” said Bish.
Bish said coal mining is expanding rapidly in Alberta and around the world thanks mainly to technological advances.
“Coal technology is just huge now and it encapsulates both thermal and coking [coal],” he said.
Coking coal stores higher levels energy and is used for making steel, while thermal coal is used for heating and power generation.
The Cardinal River/Cheviot mine produces coking coal while the Coal Valley and Obed mines produce thermal coal.
In addition to technological advances, Bish credits the upswing in Albertan coal markets to rapidly developing Asian countries like China and a loss of other markets overseas due to natural disasters.
“Floods in Australia [in 2007] took a lot of coal out of the market and drove the costs up,” he said.
“Back when the mines were shutting down, coal was selling for less than $50 a tonne,” he said. “It’s $350 a tonne now.”
Presently there are between 500 and 600 coal mineworkers in the Hinton area, with another 115 jobs to come when the Obed mine reopens.
Bish said that Hintonites will not have to wait around to see another big boom in the coal mining industry.
“I think we’re already there,” he said.