The fast-spreading coronavirus pandemic may too heavy of a burden for the already struggling coal miners in the United States, with three companies announcing operations halts due to measures to contain the spread of the disease.
Australia’s Coronado Global Resources (ASX: CRN) announced on Sunday it had idled its US thermal and metallurgical coal mines due to covid-19-induced global economic downturn.
The company, which operates the Buchanan, Logan and Greenbrier mine complexes in Virginia and West Virginia, will keep its Curragh mine in Australia open.
The operation, which accounts for 65% of Coronado’s output and earnings, will accommodate metallurgical coal export requirements of the miner’s key customers in India and the Asia Pacific, as well as to the Stanwell Power Station, a Queensland government owned entity
Given the significant stockpile of US
inventories and continued production from Curragh, operating cash flows are
expected to remain positive, Coronado said.
The miner also noted that its US operations
will be maintained for immediate restart when market conditions improve
and that shipments to Europe, Brazil and the US itself will continue.
Pennsylvania-based Consol Energy (NYSE: CEIX) said on Monday that it was it is temporarily curtailing production at its Bailey coal mine in Pennsylvania for two weeks after two employees tested positive for the coronavirus.
The miner said it’s keeping its Pennsylvania
Complex, including the Enlow Fork and Harvey mines, in operations.
The complex has the capacity to
produce 28.5 million tonnes of coal a year, while the halted Bailey mine
accounts for 11.5 million annual tonnes of the total capacity.
Alliance Resource Partners (NASDAQ: ARLP) said Monday it would temporarily stop producing coal at all its Illinois basin mines as global measures to combat the virus had crushed demand for energy. In addition, the price war initiated by Saudi Arabia and Russia had lowered oil prices even more, it noted.
The miner also said it was withdrawing its initial 2020 operating and financial guidance provided in January, which did not reflect the impact of the covid-19.
“Although we are suspending formal guidance, we currently anticipate ARLP’s total sales tons for 2020 will be approximately 25% below our initial expectations,” president and chief executive, Joseph Craft, said in the statement.
The operations halt is scheduled to
last through April 15, though the coal miner said resuming of production could
be accelerated or extended, based on business needs of its customers.
“It is important to note that
approximately 75% of our domestic sales are targeted to states that depend on coal,
more than any other fuel, to generate electricity,” Craft said.
The announcements come as the
pandemic has rapidly expanded across the US, where the death toll is now
expected to reach at least 100,000 people this week.
Moody’s Investor Services said on Thursday it expected further closures and bankruptcies within the US coal industry as domestic demand for coal was set to drop in the near-term due to the country’s economy shut-down to try reducing the numbers of coronavirus patients.
A slower economic activity is also
cutting down US electricity demand, which together with stronger environmental,
social and governance concerns could represent “an unprecedented shock” to the
coal industry.
“Before the intensification of
the coronavirus pandemic in the US, we expected that coal production would fall
by15%-20% in the US, to about 550 million st-600 million st,” Moody’s
said. “We now expect that the industry conditions will worsen beyond this
forecast,” the ratings agency said.
The volume of coal mined in the US has been declining for the past decade, although burning the fuel still accounts for almost one-quarter of all the country’s electricity generation.
Jobs in the sector also continue to
shrink. While there are over 129
million people employed by businesses in the US, there are only about
50,000 coal miners, or 0.04% of the country’s total number of people working,
employed by the industry.
The latest jobs report, published
in early March, shows that there are fewer people employed by the coal
sector now (50,600 as of February) than three years ago (50,900 in January
2017). This compares to over 6.4 million jobs being added in the past three
years.