<DrumBeat: February 24, 2009 The Oil Drum DrumBeat: February 25, 2009>

58 comments on Are Reserves of the Largest US Coal Field Overstated by 50%?

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galacticsurfer on February 24, 2009 - 11:40am Permalink | Subthread | Comments top

PO should cause a diesel shortage and make Powder River Basin coal an inaccessible luxury to to exorbitant transport costs or completely unavailability of diesel fuel for eh mile long trains to the midwest USA. Also the costs to dig out ever thinner seams with higher stripping ratios will become a big factor when human and animal muslce power is forced to replace machinery. The machinery is electric(coal based) and diesel based. If the excavation costs can be completely coal based then the question becomes EROEI, i.e. how much of the coal do you have to burn to get the coal out and to transport in electric trains. This presuming no more diesel. When muscle power is left out of the equation and all energy to remove and transport coal is taken from the coal itself then the question is not anymore about dollar costs but when does it take more coal to get the coal out and transport it to midwest than you end up with.

If 37% of US coal comes from PRB in Wyoming and 450 million tonnes x 20 years = 9 billion tonnes is completely played out in 20 years then according to our Peaking resource theory peak happens earlier and dcline last longer, i.e. depletion means in X years supply from PRD willbe only X% of current supply and will decline X% p.a. putting a slowly tightening noose around US electrical supply as NG, etc. which supplies rest of US electrical supply will also be in decline.

The situation looks like with PO, lots of overoptimistic estimates were made based on demand and infinite growth models.

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majorian on February 24, 2009 - 12:09pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

If you take the reserves of PRB as 60 billion tons, not 9 billion tons.
60 billion / assuming 450 million per year = 133 years. At $30 per ton
the price per kwh might double in price but it's so cheap now that probably won't matter. Price of electricity from natural twice as high as from coal.
As far as trains full of coal goes, this option is cheaper
on an operating basis than minemouth coal plants sending the power thru the grid. The disadvantages like congestion and not being able to sequester CO2 are as usual not factored in; because I support CCS, we should go for grid delivered electricity from wind farms or minemouth/CCS site coal generating plants, but there are only a couple decades before petroleum becomes effectively exhausted, IMO. Also the rail infrastructure appears to be seriously failing.

http://www.aep.com/newsroom/resources/docs/Meeting_Americas_Future_Elect...

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jaggedben on February 24, 2009 - 4:35pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Also the rail infrastructure appears to be seriously failing.

That's an overstatement at best. At least until the financial crash last year, US railroads were expanding capacity and hauling more freight than ever before. Contrary to the out of context/out of date figures in the link you provided, UP and BNSF both loaded record amounts of PRB coal in 2008.

I'm against coal, but in favor of arguing from facts. And I'm in favor of railroads, as we all should be. It's the transportation system we will still have when oil is gone.

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58 comments on Are Reserves of the Largest US Coal Field Overstated by 50%?

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