[LINK] "The Last King of Coal Makes His Stand as Mines Vanish Around Him"

[rfmcdonald]

Bloomberg's Andrew M. Harris describes how the last of the big American coal magnates is desperately fighting against the end of his industry. I do feel a certain amount of sympathy for Robert E. Murray, but the death of the industry he's connected to is inevitable. For the good of the planet, too.

At a time when the U.S. coal industry is beset on all sides -- by environmentalists, by regulators, by the economics of shale gas -- Murray has positioned himself as King Coal’s warrior-in-chief. And his main antagonist is the country’s commander-in-chief.

He calls Barack Obama “the greatest enemy I’ve ever had in my life.” His fight with the president, he says, has gotten “beyond personal.”

Since Inauguration Day in 2009, Murray Energy Corp. has filed no fewer than a dozen separate lawsuits against the federal government, more than any other U.S. coal company. Murray, the man, is trying to beat back Obama administration regulations, which he says are strangling his industry. Someone, he says, has to try.

It’s an uphill battle, perhaps even a quixotic one. But that isn’t dissuading Murray, who’s built his private company into the No. 6 U.S. coal producer, according to 2013 data collected by the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Since then, he has expanded further while many others have retreated, paying $1.37 billion last March for a controlling stake in Foresight Energy LP. Adding its extensive operations in the Illinois basin, Murray Energy now can produce nearly 65 million tons of coal a year.

[. . .]

Today he’s responsible for a company with 7,500 employees digging coal out of 13 mines in five states. Not surprisingly, he’s no big fan of the recent Paris climate agreement, dismissing it as “a meaningless fraud that will have no effect on carbon dioxide emissions.”