U.S. Longwall Development Projected to Increase

Editor’s note: This is the second part of a two-part series on longwall mining in the United States. Part one was published in the December 2005 issue of ME (pp. 21-26). It provided a history of longwall coal mining in the United States. It also discussed the technology involved in the productivity gains and operational improvements. Boyd anticipates that U.S. coal production will increase by 61 Mt (67 million st) (6 percent) from 2004 to 2010. A combination of higher surface and underground mine production will be required to meet the projected market demand. Boyd’s projections of coal production by major mining methods are shown in Table 1.