The Port of Gladstone expects to reach full export capacity by the end of March, as the first coal shipments from the Blackwater line are expected this week. The ports of Bundaberg and Alma remain closed.
Arch Coal, Inc. announced an agreement with Canadian Crown Corporation Ridley Terminals Inc. to facilitate coal exports to Pacific Rim markets. The five-year agreement will give Arch throughput capacity at the terminal of up to 2 million t of coal for 2011 and up to 2.5 million t of coal for 2012 through 2015.
A new technology that could help release some of the currently unusable energy in an estimated 2 billion t of US coal waste has been successfully demonstrated by a Department of Energy (DOE) supported project. The hyperbaric centrifuge technology is aimed at separating the fine coal particles from water, allowing their recovery for energy, and marks a step forward in clean coal separation.
Churchill Mining has completed the purchase of the land to be used as the site of the future port facility for the shipment of coal from the East Kutai coal project. When complete, the port will be capable of handling 30 million tpa of coal and offer direct access to international markets.
India’s Adani Group will help to build a coal export railway in Indonesia’s Southern Sumatra Province in another example of the country’s investment in natural resources abroad. Meanwhile, the Mongolian Government has rejected a direct rail link to China from the massive Tavan Tolgoi resource, citing the possible effect such a link would have on its sovereignty.
Doosan Power Systems has announced that it has completed a year of successful testing at the world’s largest OxyCoal™ Clean Combustion Test Facility. This facility, in combination with the newly opened Post Combustion Carbon Capture (PCCC) plant test facility in Renfrew, UK, makes the site a global centre for carbon capture research.
Siemens has been awarded the FEED contract to supply coal gasification and power block technology for the Texas Clean Energy Project, a polygeneration IGCC project that will use coal as its feedstock. The project, which will have a carbon capture rate of 90%, received US$ 350 million under the US Department of Energy’s Clean Coal Power Initiative – Round 3.
GTL Energy has successfully commissioned it’s first coal-upgrading plant in North Dakota, the plant processes low-rank coal to produce low moisture, high energy briquettes.
Rescue efforts are underway to free 32 workers who have been trapped following a coal mine explosion in northern Turkey.
Two methane explosions have occurred at the Raspadskaya coal mine in Siberia, trapping miners underground.
In the worst mining disaster in over 25 years, an explosion at an underground coal mine in West Virginia has killed at least 25 miners.
Peabody Energy has shipped the first coal to the new Newcastle Coal Infrastructure Group export terminal in Newcastle, Australia. The NCIG terminal is an important part of the miners plans to nearly double coal exports from Australia by 2014.
A new type of continuous barge unloader (CBU) from ThyssenKrupp Fördertechnik will be put into operation at the Bontang Coal Terminal this Spring.