'Black Diamonds' Still Vital To Hampton Roads

February 08, 2001|By FRED TANNENBAUM Daily Press

NEWPORT NEWS — For generations, coal has come out of the Appalachian Mountains and down to the sea here on an artery of steel rails and wooden crossties.

In 2000, the CSX railroad reported it brought 12.3 million tons of "black diamonds" to the Pier IX and Dominion Terminal Associates piers in Newport News. It did so with an average of more than two 150-car trains each day.

It started in late 1882 when the schooner William H. Kenzel swallowed up a load at the first coal pier here. About 100,000 tons of coal had sailed out of Newport News by year's end.

The massive coal docks at the south end of Newport News helped build the city. They remain a vital part of operations that see rivers of coal cascade into the capacious hulls of ships then shipped all over the world and to other parts of the United States.

The Norfolk Southern terminal at Sewell's Point in Norfolk is the largest.

In 1999, the latest year for which figures are available, 33 million tons of coal steamed out of Hampton Roads on ships, according to Kelly Platz, administrator of the Hampton Roads Maritime Association. About 24.5 million tons of it headed overseas and 8.4 million stayed in the United States.

The coal included 8.3 million tons from Dominion Terminals, 4.3 million from Pier IX and 20.2 million from Norfolk Southern.

In 1998, 45.4 million tons of coal shipped out of Hampton Roads, including 36.8 million overseas and 8.6 million domestically.

Those totals include: Dominion Terminals, 11.5 million tons; Pier IX, 6.6 million tons and Norfolk Southern, 27.3 million.

Dominion Terminals Associates President Charles E. Brinley said exports have slowed in recent years because:

* The rate of exchange has made the dollar worth more than other currencies in some countries. That makes American coal more expensive than that from competing countries,

* Other countries can supply the coal closer to the purchasing country, and

* High oil prices make it cost more to ship coal over longer distances.

Brinley said there isn't as much coal moving through his plant's massive extraterrestrial-looking loaders.

The terminal can handle 22 million tons a year; its peak was about 18 million tons each in 1991 and 1992. In 2000, the terminal moved only about 7.2 million tons.

Because of lower exports, Dominion is shipping about 60 percent of its coal domestically and 40 percent overseas.

Two types of coal leave Hampton Roads. One is metallurgical coal, used to fire the furnaces used to make steel. Most of that is exported. The other is "steam coal," or coal used by power plants. Some of that goes elsewhere in the United States, Brinley said.

But exports are on the upswing. Brinley said Western European countries are buying coal shipped through Newport News to run their steam-powered power plants again, something that has not been done in some time.

Large shipments of metallurgical coal to Japan have "evaporated," Brinley said.

Australian producers can offer the coal for less because of the exchange rate and the lower cost of fuel to ship it to Japan from Australia instead of the United States, which is thousands of miles farther.

"When fuel prices are low enough, then distance doesn't make as much difference," Brinley said.


* George C. Coleman, for whom the bridge between Yorktown and Gloucester Point was named, was commissioner of the State Highway Commission between 1913 and 1923.

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