Peabody Energy Corp., the nation’s biggest miner, is on the verge of bankruptcy, crippled by $6.3 billion in debt, Bloomberg reported yesterday. The company’s announcement that it may file sent a decisive signal to the market: The U.S. coal industry is still too big. Peabody has lost 98 percent of its market value in 12 months and watched as its main rivals all filed for bankruptcy, crushed by falling demand, massive debt loads, mounting environmental regulations and competition from cheap natural gas. Coal prices have plummeted as much as 75 percent since 2011, and hundreds of mines across the country have been shuttered. Many analysts reckoned that Peabody would be the one to survive the downturn. As the biggest producer of them all, it has a diverse mix of operations from Illinois to Australia, but for all its reach, the 133-year-old company is now buckling under its debt.
