By Matt Combs

July 15, 2018 - The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) recently released their quarterly report on coal production for the first quarter and while numbers are down at the national level, southern West Virginia produced nearly 10 percent more coal in the first quarter of 2018 as the region did in the first quarter of 2017.

Production was also up in the first quarter of 2018 of the fourth quarter of 2017.

Between the months of January and March, southern West Virginia mines produced 12,107,000 short tons of coal, compared to 11,866,000 short tons between October and December 2017 and 11,018,000 short tons during the months of January through March 2017.

Those figures account for a 9.9 percent increase comparing year-to-year and a 2.03 percent increase over the previous quarter.

While production is up in southern West Virginia, the same cannot be said for the national average or even the northern part of the state.

Coal production in northern West Virginia decreased 12.4 percent when comparing year-to-year figures while showing another startling decrease of 10.37 percent when comparing this year's first quarter to the fourth quarter of 2017.

The heavy losses in production in the northern part of the state caused the total state production levels to drop just over 2 percent on the year-to-year comparison and 4.3 percent compared to the fourth quarter of 2017.

Nationwide, when comparing the first quarter of this year to the first quarter of last year, overall national coal production fell by 5.2 percent or 10,278,000 short tons of coal.

In the fourth quarter of 2017, the nation's coal mines produced 193,842,000 short tons of coal, with that production decreasing 3.65 percent for the first quarter of 2018 to 186,755,000 short tons.

Regionally, Appalachian coal production was down 3 percent comparing year-to-year, with decreases of 13.3 percent in Kentucky and 6.5 percent in Pennsylvania.

National first-quarter coal production has dropped over 31 percent since 2011.

Coal consumption nationally also dropped, some 2.9 percent over the fourth quarter of 2017 and 3.3 percent when compared to the first quarter of 2017.

Exports of thermal coal, used in power plants, dropped some 8 percent when comparing the first quarter of this year to the fourth quarter of last year, with metallurgical exports rising by less than one percent.

According to recently released EIA forecasts, the need for thermal coal will continue to fall.

The government energy monitoring agency is reporting that since January, national power suppliers have increased natural gas produced capacity by 5.4 gigawatts, with that number forecasted to jump to 15 gigawatts by the end of the year.

The EIA is forecasting that natural gas use for power will reach a near-record during the summer months of June, July and August with approximately 37 percent of the nation's power coming from natural gas.

Coal produced electricity is expected to drop slightly to approximately 30 percent in the same time period. 

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