MAY 27
And another one bites the dust…
Starting six years ago, Washington and Oregon found themselves besieged by a flotilla of massive, well-financed companies hell-bent on building coal export terminals to feed Asia’s allegedly insatiable appetite for coal. But the coal industry’s vision of a robust export market turned out to be a mirage: starting in early 2011, international coal prices peaked and then collapsed for five consecutive years. One by one, as the Asian coal bubble deflated, the export projects folded, the smart money fled… and the few remaining hangers-on sank into insolvency, many of them weighed down by their massive, ill-timed bets on coal exports.
But yesterday marked the end of that era: Arch Coal, the second largest coal company in America and last big name remaining in the coal export game, gave up the ghost. The company handed over its 38% share in the proposed Millennium Bulk Logistics Terminal in Longview, Washington, to the project’s last remaining supporter, Lighthouse Resources—a company that used to be called Ambre Energy North America until a financial collapse forced Ambre to cede its assets to its investors.
See the complete story here.
