Proposals to export coal from Pacific Northwest ports to overseas markets have provoked criticism in the Northwest and along the lower Columbia River. Yesterday the nonprofit environmental research group Sightline Institute added to the controversy in its newly released report on Ambre Energy, an Australian company currently promoting plans for a pair of coal export terminals along the lower Columbia. The Sightline report says mounting financial, regulatory and other challenges will make it unlikely the company can deliver on its promises in the U.S.
The report’s author: Clark Williams-Derry,
said Ambre has limited capital, little experience in the energy industry and no
experience in running port terminals
“ Last year the company had to completely write off its only
significant overseas coal asset, which was a proposed coal project in Queensland, Australia,
that was recently shut down, halted by the Queensland government. So when you hear that
Ambre is an international coal company, that project is what people are talking
about, and Ambre has now completely written it off”.
Williams Derry added coal
companies worldwide are facing financial difficulties because of the loss of American
markets and the slowing of growth in China
and India.
Company spokeswoman Liz Fuller
told Crosscut, a Seattle based daily news service on the web, Ambre Energy has become,
“an important player in its sector”. Fuller said Ambre has a contract with two
South Korean utilities to deliver up to 5 million tons of coal per year from Montana’s Powder
River Basin. She added
the company operates two mines in the Basin, and would ship the coal through an
existing facility in Longview, and a proposed
export terminal to be built near Saint
Helens, Oregon.
The Sightline report states the
company’s recently acquired U.S.
mining business has hemorrhaged money, and one of its two mines recently
announced plans to lay off nearly half its work force.
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