President Trump has yet to save the struggling coal industry, numbers show
"Calls for Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility to rule out loan to Adani after alleged fraud revealed"
Michael Collins, USA TODAY Published 6:00 a.m. ET April 4, 2018 | Updated 4:50 p.m. ET April 9, 2018
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In his first State of the Union Address, President Trump claimed the "war on beautiful clean coal" is over. That's not exactly true. Buzz60 gettyimages-519131718_large.jpg
WASHINGTON – President Trump was in a celebratory mood early last spring as he prepared to sign an executive order rolling back environmental protections reviled by the nation’s coal industry.
Turning to the miners beside him at the ceremony, Trump repeated a promise that he made often during his campaign for president.
“You’re going back to work,” he said to nods of approval and applause.
But not much has changed for the nation’s ailing coal industry since Trump moved into the White House.
Coal employment and production are up just slightly, coal consumption is down, and coal prices have fallen a little below where they were the day that Trump took office.
“I don’t think Trump has had any effect on coal so far,” said Noah Kaufman, a research scholar at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy.
Adani moves to slash costs to get Carmichael mine across the line
Sep 13 2018 at 12:34 PM Updated Sep 13 2018 at 5:59 PM
Adani Australia will no longer build a 388-kilometre standard gauge rail link from the Galilee Basin, pictured, to its Abbot Point coal terminal in North Queensland. Greenpeace/Andrew Quilty
by Mark Ludlow
Indian energy giant Adani has moved a step closer to delivering its controversial $16.5 billion Carmichael coal mine in Central Queensland, by scaling back its project and slashing costs to make it more attractive to investors.
In the most encouraging sign for the development in more than three years, Adani has abandoned plans to use a more complex rail line, effectively cutting it in half, to save up to $1.5 billion.
The move has been welcomed by pro-coal advocates, including federal Resources Minister Matt Canavan, who want to open up the Galilee Basin as part of a push to create thousands of jobs in northern Australia.
Adani Group files plea in India high court to stall fraud investigation
"Calls for Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility to rule out loan to Adani after alleged fraud revealed"
The mining conglomerate is asking the court to quash a request to produce information regarding its coal imports from Indonesia
Michael Safi in Delhi @safimichael
Wed 29 Aug 2018 09.42 EDT Last modified on Wed 29 Aug 2018 09.48 EDT
Gautam Adani, the chairman of the Adani Group, in December 2010. Photograph: Sam Panthaky/AFP/Getty Images
Mining conglomerate the Adani Group is trying to prevent Indian authorities from accessing its business records as part of an investigation into an alleged $4bn fraud by power companies.
Lawyers for Adani on Tuesday filed a plea asking the Bombay high court to quash a formal request by Indian investigators to Singaporean authorities to force the company to produce information regarding its coal imports from Indonesia.
The request is part of an investigation by India’s Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) into a $4.4bn alleged fraud by 40 power companies including six Adani subsidiaries.
According to DRI documents, the companies allegedly used fake middlemen to inflate the price of coal they were importing from Indonesia. The scheme allowed the companies to charge higher tariffs by exaggerating their production costs, the DRI claimed.
If true, the alleged scam would also have allowed the companies to siphon billions of dollars from India into offshore bank accounts where Indian authorities would struggle to tax or account for the money.