Published: July 22, 2016 |

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Tuesday’s theme at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland: “Make America Work Again.”  Nowhere is the statement more pronounced than the coalfields of West Virginia where thousands of coal miners are out of a job and local and state government budgets are stretched tighter than ever after tax revenue from the state’s largest industry has dwindled in recent years.

“We’ve got to get ourselves back to where we’re mining 100 Million tons of coal and employing 16,000 to 17,000 direct coal miners.  That would be a good day,” said Bill Raney, President of the West Virginia Coal Association from Cleveland on MetroNews “Talkline” Tuesday.  “It’s going to take a while to turn all of that around clearly.”

But Raney is confident a Donald Trump presidency would create the ability to reverse the coal industry’s fortunes. While it’s unlikely Trump knows the deep technical issues surrounding the coal industry and the federal regulations which have crippled the capacity to burn coal, Raney predicted Trump will be a positive force to bring coal back to a competitive energy source.

“People say, ‘he can’t change things in the coal industry.’ But everything Obama did was done by executive order, agency behavior, and administrative edict.  None of it was done with Congressional authority,” Raney said. “He assured us he would take action. He said he would absolutely if it was administrative in nature he would do that.  He wanted to get the people back to work.”

Turning the tide of coal may not be as easy as revoking a series of executive orders.  Those orders have created a change in business practices. Many power companies have already begun the slow process of transitioning from coal fired generation to natural gas.  The expensive transition is done with long range forecasting and doesn’t shift overnight.  Raney admitted it was another obstacle, but said a reversal in thinking in the White House would be a huge step in the right direction for coal.

“They are generalities at this point,” Raney said. “But it’s positive and there’s no way in the world you can support what the Democrat party at the national level is saying.”

Raney was in Cleveland to attend a number of receptions for convention delegates sponsored by coal companies and related industries.

Source: (July 19, 2016) MetroNews

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