Apr 12, 2017 4 min read

What a difference a year makes.

When the North American Coalbed Methane Forum convened in Southpointe last May, a portion of the day’s discussion focused on whether the formal signing of the Paris Accord on climate change would be the shot heard round the world for the fossil fuel industry.

Flash ahead less than a year later to Wednesday at the Hilton Garden Inn, and there was optimism from at least one speaker that the U.S. coal industry could stage a comeback under some rule rollbacks made recently by the Trump administration.

The NACBM group represents an industry that extracts methane from coalbed seams, particularly in advance of mines being prepared for longwall operations as a measure of safety as well as an opportunity to make some money selling methane of pipeline quality.

The keynote speaker for the event at the Hilton Garden Inn was Christian Palich, president of the Ohio Coal Association. He spoke to about 50 attendees at the event.

Palich heads an industry group that includes 10 coal production companies and 100 other companies associated with Ohio’s mining industry.

Those membership numbers are down significantly from eight years ago, when Palich said there were about 40 production companies and far more supply chain companies.

The fallout, he said, was attributed to a number of regulations from the Obama administration that ultimately halved coal production in the Buckeye State, which produced 30 million tons of coal in 2009, but finished last year at 14 million tons. Sales plummeted correspondingly from $8 billion to less than $1 billion during the time frame, he said.

The decline in sales also saw the loss of 1,000 mining jobs and as many as 10,000 support jobs during the past decade.

The regulations coupled with the massive output of cleaner-burning and cheap natural gas from the Appalachian Basin’s Marcellus Shale strata “created a perfect storm of a disaster we witnessed play out over the past several years,” he said.

While Trump this spring rolled back some of the regulations that hindered coal production, Palich said Wednesday his association is constructing “a laundry list” of action items focused on reviving the industry.

While the coal industry has been “celebrating that our industry was going to get a second chance” based on the actions Trump took in its favor in the first 75 days in office, Palich acknowledged it has its work cut out for it.

Foremost, he said is finding a way for it to effectively compete with gas, especially when it comes to providing the fuel for America’s power grid.

“I firmly believe that Trump put the coal industry back on a fair playing field so we can better compete,” he said.

But he said later, “I don’t want to fool anybody into thinking that we can get back to pre-Obama levels of production or coal mining jobs.”

During a question and answer session, he acknowledged one woman’s question that projections show technology threatens to be responsible for eliminating about 38 percent of jobs in all industries in the next decade.

While stating that the coal industry has adopted technologies that have improved production while eliminating jobs, Palich countered that if coal could win back much of its business, there could be growth in subsidiary jobs like equipment manufacturing.

He also acknowledged his industry must find a way to increase the use of coal-fired power generation plants.

“It’s vital,” he said, adding that the current amount of coal-fired generating capacity “needs to stay online.”

But another NACBM member reminded him that the group favors extraction of methane to sell to power companies, noting that the site of the former Hatfield’s Ferry coal-fired station in Greene County is being readied for conversion to gas operation.

“We’re in a dilemma because we’re also in support of natural gas,” the attendee stated.

Others questions revolved around whether coal can ever return to favor among a younger generation as a place where they can make a living.

While acknowledging that many children of miners probably chose other types of careers, Palich also noted a challenge in the academic end of the industry in answering another man’s question.

“There’s been a drop in mining engineering schools,” he said, adding Ohio State University has not had a program for some time.

He also agreed with another member that the industry needs to reposition itself as a “future fuel,” who stated that clean coal technology is possible.

“We need to change the mindset that this is the coal of the future. That’s the buzzword for us in the industry.”