>>20058825Southern West Virginia, eastern Kentucky, and western Virginia may have well over 100 years of premium metallurgical coal left, except all their mines are CM/room and pillar small mines with, therefore, high overhead costs.
The only longwall met coal mines in America are Leer and Leer South (owned by Arch coal, which is slowly transforming itself into a met coal company as much as possible), and Warrior Met Coal in Alabama.
Leer+Leer South produce about 7 million tons per year. Warrior Met's two mines produce about 8 million tons per year, and when the Blue Creek Mines starts up in 2026 (another longwall), then Warrior could be doing well over 10 million tons of premium metallurgical coal per year.
Warrior has easy access to international shipping lanes, being close to the Gulf of Mexico, which holds down their costs even further as compared to West Virginia. Warrior just barges their coal down to the port.
Long term if America wants to remain a met coal powerhouse, we're going to have to explore Alaska. Or we can go back to using high calorific value but dirtier coal like in the Pittsburgh seam, which used to produce a lot of met coal but now its coal is used for thermal, due to high impurities. Switching to these other coals for coking would entail more processing for the coke and higher costs.
