Word: coal
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Ultimately, the Sisters are dealing in an exhaustible asset: though the day when the oil begins to run out has been delayed, it will come. The companies prudently are putting huge sums into diversification. They own far more coal than firms that specialize in coal mining, are active in uranium production and solar power research. Exxon and Gulf are partners with Cities Service and the Canadian government in Syncrude, a company that will open a plant designed to squeeze oil at last from the famed Athabasca tar sands. The sands, in northern Alberta, have long been known to contain gigantic...
...guard against the day when the oil runs out, Exxon since 1970 has acquired coal reserves of more than 8 billion tons, and now operates several mines. It is also pushing some ventures far removed from oil. For example, early this year it introduced Qyx, a computer-programmed typewriter designed to undersell wordprocessing IBM and Xerox machines. One indication of Exxon's strength: it plans a staggering $24 billion in capital expenditures over the next four years, to be financed just about entirely out of its own cash, with little if any borrowing...
Carrying hand-lettered placards of protest, nearly 3,000 residents of an Ohio Valley coal-mining area pressed into a hotel ballroom in the town of St. Clairsville in a concerned and angry mood last week. The subject of the meeting, set up by the Environmental Protection Agency: an antipollution rule that has caused a classic conflict involving the competing needs for clean air, jobs and profits...
Ohio has a problem with sulfur dioxide air pollution, and the EPA has ordered its utilities to meet strict limits on smokestack emissions. But to burn Ohio's high-sulfur coal, say the companies, would necessitate installing expensive scrubbing devices. They rebelled at the cost; one utility reckoned that compliance with the EPA order could cause a 24% rise in electric rates. Instead, the companies said, they would import low-sulfur coal from Western or Appalachian states. That in turn riled the miners, who argue that if the utilities buy out-of-state coal, demand for Ohio coal will...
...miners want relief under an amendment to the 1977 Clean Air Act sponsored by Ohio Senator Howard Metzenbaum. This empowers the President, on an EPA recommendation, to force utilities to burn local coal and still meet pollution standards when other measures (like using out-of-state coal) would cause "economic disruption." Whoever finally wins, someone must lose: either electricity users, miners or the living, breathing residents of Ohio...