Coal receives boost from Gulf crisis

In 1776, the historian Gibbon observed that the command of iron gives a nation the command of gold. Much the same might be said of coal to which the story of iron is so inextricably tied. By 1761, the secret of melting iron with coal was finally discovered in the country of Salop, a most unlikely backwater, and our modern coal-iron industry was born.

Did you know that coal was burned in what eventually became the county of Glamorgan, South Wales, in the second millennium before Christ, and was known in China and in the Roman Empire around the time of Christ?

It appears it was known to some North American Indians by the 13th century and coal mining was practised throughout Europe from the Dark Ages, but remained on a small scale until the industrial revolution.

Some experts state that our word “coal” does not come from the Anglo or Saxon languages. It is Celtic, the tongue of the pre-Saxon ancient Britons, and is still a component of the surviving Celtic languages. Its ultimate root means “black.” Our English word “mine” (mining) also derives from Celtic.

There is no standard coal. It is not a fungible commodity that can be traded like oil, grain or copper. There is merely an endless series of varieties, from brown coal or lignite at the one extreme to anthracite (which is about 90% carbon) at the other.

Much to the surprise of some people, coal is, strictly speaking, not a mineral but a sedimentary rock.

It was not until 1800, however, that coal was being carbonized on a large commercial scale for the first time, the resulting coalgas (about 50% hydrogen, 30% methane) being used for lighting and the coke for smelting iron ore.

By the mid-19th century there was awakening interest in its byproducts — coal tar, ammonia and pitch — from which some plastics and explosives are now derived.

Coal is one of the most useful and profitable products mined by man and, despite oil and gas competition, output may now be said to be increasing again.

Known world coal reserves may be conservatively estimated at perhaps seven trillion tons, of which North America has a large share.

The present world offtake rate is about 3.5 billion tons per year, up strongly from 2.98 billion tons in 1980; known reserves are capable of supplying this extraction rate for several centuries.

Currently, the U.S. produces about 850 million tons or 25% of the world total, followed by China at 24%, the USSR at 18%, Poland at 7%, the United Kingdom at 4.3%, South Africa at 3.8%, India at 3.7% and West Germany at 3.4%. Canada’s output of some 30 million tons contrasts with the U.S.’s giant output.

The important news is that the rising price of oil and gas resulting from the mercurial insecurities of the Middle East has understandably reawakened interest in coal worldwide.

One energy agency projection for the year 2000 has a 24% increase in coal output over 1990 in the U.S. alone.

The latest gross average weekly earnings in bituminous coal and lignite mining in the U.S. is listed at US$675.11. As the Canadian economy continues to decline and the price of oil will probably never return to pre-Aug. 1 levels, we could sure use a few thousand more jobs like that. T.P. (Tom) Mohide, a former president of the Winnipeg Commodity Exchange, served as a director of mining resources with the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources prior to his retirement in 1986.