For the State of American Coal, Check Out West Virginia's Mining
- State’s thermal coal-rich northern half is seeing output fall
- Production is up in southern counties where met coal abounds
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No place tells the story of America’s coal markets better than West Virginia right now.
According to U.S. government estimates released Thursday, mining in the northern half of the Mountain State -- the part known for its bounty of thermal coal, used to fuel U.S. power plants -- slid 7 percent in the first half of 2018 from year-earlier levels. Meanwhile, output from West Virginia’s southern coalfields -- known for massive reserves of metallurgical coal, the kind used in steelmaking -- was up, by almost the same percentage.