Coal Miners Fired in Appalachia Getting Hired in Wyoming

[theHandpuppet]

Coal Miners Fired in Appalachia Getting Hired in Wyoming
By Tim Loh
Oct 23, 2014

It’s boom times in Wyoming for embattled U.S. coal companies, where the mining industry is hiring workers while shedding them in Appalachia.

Alpha Natural Resources Inc. (ANR), the second-largest U.S. producer, hasn’t posted a profit in three years and is closing money-losing mines in West Virginia amid plans to increase production out West by as much as 30 percent.

Miner Steven King is going along for the ride. After losing his job last month at the company’s Black Castle operation, King, 42, is getting ready to move his family 1,500 miles (2,400 kilometers) to a state he’s never visited to work at an Alpha site in Wyoming.

With the U.S. coal industry in its worst decline in decades, companies including Alpha and Peabody Energy Corp. (BTU), the biggest producer, are pivoting toward pockets of future profit. No prospect is bigger than the Powder River Basin, a high, mineral-rich plain of yellow grass and sagebrush stretching from central Wyoming to southern Montana....

MORE at http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-10-22/coal-miners-fired-in-appalachia-getting-hired-in-wyoming.html

[A Little Weird]

1. Well I'm glad they are able to find work

But I long for the day when someone can get paid big bucks for protecting resources rather than extracting them.