THE WORLD OF SMART MINING

摘要

As US Senator Pete Domenici stated, there is a "global energy crisis in progress," far more serious than is being currently reported. Natural gas prices have quadrupled in the US in less than one year; OPEC reduced crude oil production to maintain current levels of prices, which doubled in one year (1999 to 2000); Europeans staged protest demonstrations; Californian utilities were on the verge of bankruptcy, and rolling blackouts are now very common. The adverse impacts are far reaching, affecting the US, European Community, and world economies. A forced outage of a 430MW coal-fired plant in Utah, for example, cost US