Cool summer has helped keep coal prices in check as air conditioners stay turned off

摘要

Just when coal producers in the Powder River Basin and Illinois Basin were about to apply the coup de grace to the tonnage that was lost to fuel switching a year earlier something happened. And it wasn't lower natural gas prices. A headline on the interwebs last week said "The Sweaters Have Come Out in Atlanta" as the South was hit with some record low temperatures for August. Elsewhere around the U.S. summer swelter may not have turned to summer sweaters, but with fall one month and one day away the chances that air conditioners are going to come to the rescue are getting slim.