North America - The Saudi Arabia of Coal

There’s a great old story about good news and bad news that finishes, "The bad news is all we have to eat this winter is buffalo chips, but the good news is we have lots of buffalo chips." Change the subject to coal, and your understand the case with the US. Coal is generally high in sulfur and costly to desulfurize and it creates lots of greenhouse CO₂ when it burns. On the other hand, we have lots of coal. Somebody 30 years ago said the US is the Saudi Arabia of coal, a statement that we forget at our peril.

As an example of the major coal regions in the lower 48, look at the map on the USGS web site http://energy.usgs.gov/factsheets/nca/2.html. The US has more coal than shown in this map, especially in Alaska. While much of Alaska’s coal is in the arctic north, coal in the area around Anchorage is accessible and being mined. The US also has coal that is not economically recoverable, so it is not included in the USGS maps.

As might be expected, Canada also has large coal resources. Much of it is in Alberta and the Mountains of British Columbia, essentially an extension of the resource in Montana and North Dakota. Of course, if you are Canadian, you see the Montana and North Dakota Coal as a southward extension of the Canadian Western Province coal beds. More Canadian coal is found on the other end of the country in the Maritime provinces, and there is also an important resource in Ontario.