
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, April 26, 1994                   TAG: 9404260140
SECTION: BUSINESS                    PAGE: C-8   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: By DAVID REED ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

VA. COAL INDUSTRY IN A DEEP DEPRESSION

Virginia's coal mining industry is in a bust, with miners working far fewer hours, making less money and mining less coal because of declining prices on the global market and higher production costs, analysts said Friday.

``The market has just collapsed,'' Dink Shackelford, director of the Virginia Mining Association, said of the price for steel-making coal.

Pittston Coal Group, the state's biggest exporter of metallurgical coal, laid off 116 workers in Dickenson County last week and Jewell Ridge Coal Co. laid off about the same number of miners earlier this month in Buchanan County.

``There have been booms and busts down there before, but the trends have been down since 1990 and the industry is finding it increasingly difficult to compete,'' said John Randolph, director of the Virginia Center for Coal and Energy Research.

With the depletion of coal reserves in Southwest Virginia, Randolph said, "you can expect these trends to continue.''

Virginia mined 40 million tons of coal in 1993, a drop of 6 percent from the year before to the lowest amount since 1983, according to a report released by the Department of Mines, Minerals and Energy.

Coal production wages for the year totaled $244 million, the lowest level since 1976 and 8 percent lower than 1992. ``In real dollars, you'd have to go back several more years to find lower wages,'' Randolph said, referring to wages adjusted for inflation.

Production employment was up 1 percent from last year. But the 9,091 employees worked less, with man-hours down 10 percent in 1993 to 95,270. And the industry seems to have corrected the difference with recent layoffs.

The only good news in the state mining report, Randolph said, was that there was record productivity. The industry produced 2.77 tons of coal for every man-hour worked, up 4 percent from last year's figure of 2.67 tons.

by CNB