Surging coal exports would create Va. Jobs

A potential resurgence in coal exports going through a Norfolk Southern Corp. terminal in Hampton Roads, Va., may “shore up hundreds of jobs statewide,” The Virginian-Pilot reported over the weekend.

China, the biggest producer of coal in the world, has boosted its demand for metallurgical coal – a raw ingredient for making steel – and is drawing on American resources as a supplement.

A booming economy, poor access to its own coal reserves and problems securing coal from other countries spurred China to become a net importer for American coal last year, said Vlad Dorjets, an economist with the Energy Information Administration.

This demand couldn’t have come at a better time for Norfolk Southern’s Hampton Roads terminal, the nation’s largest coal-exporting port. From January through September, as the recession slowed growth worldwide, exports at that facility and two others in Newport News dropped 28 percent from the same period in 2008.

But because of China’s increasing infrastructure projects, coal producers are anticipating a resurgence in coal exports.

According to David Host, CEO of shipping company T. Parker Host, such a surge would spur hundreds of jobs in Virginia “in businesses ranging from railroads to port terminals, mines to shipping firms, coal-testing labs to harbor pilots and tugboat captains.”

Three freighters full of tens of thousands of tons of coal have been delivered to China, and six more are scheduled to ship out by the end of the year.