$BTU up 9% on the day and up ~18% after hours at the moment.
(Bloomberg) -- President Donald Trump signed executive orders to expand the mining and use of coal inside the US, a bid to power the boom in energy-hungry data centers and revive a flagging US fossil fuel industry.
“Today, we’re taking historic action to help American workers, miners, families and consumers,” Trump said Tuesday at the White House as he moved to reinvigorate the coal industry.
“All those plants that have been closed are going to be opened if they’re modern enough, or they’ll be ripped down and brand new ones will be built,” Trump said, speaking in front of coal industry workers donning hard hats. “We’re going to put the miners back to work.”
While the text of the orders were not immediately available, Trump said they would unlock powers under the Defense Production Act to ramp up coal mining and he said he would offer guarantees to industry businesses to help protect their investments from political shifts in Washington.
“We are going to guarantee we have a strong business for many years to come,” Trump said. “We are going to give a guarantee that the business will not be terminated by the ups and downs.”
The president also said he would direct Energy Secretary Chris Wright to invest in next-generation coal technology and would ask the Department of Justice to identify and fight “unconstitutional” state and local regulations he said were putting coal miners out of work. Trump said he was also granting unspecified relief to 47 companies operating more than 60 coal plants across the country.
The orders emphasize that the US is back in the business of selling coal mining rights on federal land and orders the rock be designated as a critical mineral, according to a senior White House official. Other actions include accelerating the export of US coal and related technologies.
Trump cast the moves as essential to helping the US dominate the rapidly developing artificial intelligence sector, saying the country needed to ramp up electricity production to assure its position in the AI race.
“We need more than double the energy, the electricity we have,” Trump said, vowing to get “approvals very fast” for energy projects.
Trump also signed an order to strengthen the electric grid. That order directs the Energy Department to examine the nation’s power grids and wield its authority to maintain grid reliability, according to people familiar with the matter who detailed it on condition of anonymity, setting the stage for the government to potentially use emergency authority to sustain unprofitable coal and nuclear plants.
It’s unclear whether the president’s new initiatives will be enough to dramatically shift the domestic landscape for coal, which has declined for years in the face of competition from low-cost natural gas and renewable power as well as environmental regulations and climate change concerns. It’s also not certain technology companies that have embraced emission-free nuclear and renewable energy will be eager to power their data centers with coal.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/trump-order-seeks-tap-coal-160020451.html