Drummond restart

US coal company Drummond has announced it will restart its coal operations.

The news came after the Colombian government intervened in the more than seven-week strike that shut Drummond’s two mines and its port, Reuters reports.

According to the news agency, nobody from the Sintramienergetica union, which organised the strike, answered calls for comment.

On the Friday night though, union negotiator Cesar Flores reportedly said no official notification had been received from the government that it was ending the strike.

Natural gas trust plans

For years, West Virginia has put its trust in coal. Now the beleaguered coal mining state is turning its eyes to a natural gas trust fund to provide for it into the future.

According to the Associated Press, West Virginia senate president Jeff Kessler wants to create an oil and natural gas trust fund to support core government functions decades from now.

He said the previous generation missed out on creating a permanent fund based on coal severance tax revenues.

“Had we had the good sense to put a few cents aside of every ton of coal … that has come out of our ground, we’d probably be the richest state in the union instead of, in many respects, the poorest,”AP quoted Kessler as saying.

Coal price squeeze

Canada’s coal industry is remaining cautiously optimistic for its future, but accepts it is going to have some short-term pain due to oversupply and low prices, the Vancouver Sun reports.

It quotes Walter Energy vice-president of Canadian operations Tony Meyers as saying the near future will be all about “cost control”

Being low cost was the key theme for the four companies delivering presentations at the recent Coal Association of Canada coal conference.

Teck executive vice-president Ian Kilgour told the conference the miner was part-way through its own program to reduce operating costs at its operations.