Western Railroad Discussion > Hello after a few years

After taking several years away from TO, I recently renewed my membership and have returned to my favorite hobby. I have had several life changes and hopefully in the near future I'll be able to get out and see some trains. My wife and I had a big trip planned starting in May but it looks that might be on hold due to our state of emergency. Because I have been away for so long, I am wondering how the traffic has been in the Powder River Basin in Wyoming. I have traveled there a few times when I was in Colorado seeing my family. I took some great pictures of Crawford Hill at the Ponderosa Ranch in Crawford Nebraska and hope to get there again someday. Anyways it's good to be back and I hope to chat with some of you again soon, boomer.

Welcome back.

The raging party in the PRB is over. Last year's production dipped below 300 million tons. I believe at one time the PRB produced over 500 million tons per year.

https://www.spglobal.com/platts/en/market-insights/latest-news/coal/020320-prb-q4-2019-output-totaled-723-million-st-reaches-new-low-msha

 

From a recent paper by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (I don't know where they get funding or if they have an agenda; I just saw this on the internet and it looked interesting):

• Overall USA coal production is about where it was in 1983.
• PRB coal production is about where it was in 1995.
• The export-oriented Spring Creek PRB mine, owned by Cloud Peak Energy (a company tottering on the verge of bankruptcy), reported a production increase of 1 million tons last year—but this was not nearly enough to offset a 9.1-million-ton drop in production from Cloud Peak’s two domestic-oriented PRB mines, Cordero Rojo and Antelope Coal.
• The total customer base of PRB mines has fallen to about 130 plants from just over 200 in 2008, a 35 percent drop. This decline is due mainly to coal plant retirements, a trend that is likely to continue. These 130 plants include seven mine-mouth plants located at three of the mines.
• The majority of sales from at least 11 PRB mines are now concentrated at just a few power plants, leaving them highly vulnerable to individual power plant closures or changes in supply contracts.