There’s a real possibility that every publicly traded coal company in the St. Louis region could wind up in bankruptcy court this year, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported yesterday. Just last week, Peabody Energy and Foresight Energy both disclosed they may have to file for chapter 11 protection as heavy debt loads weigh them down amid a long industry slump. They would join Creve Coeur, Mo.-based Arch Coal, which filed for bankruptcy protection in January. In addition, Patriot Coal Corp., formerly based in Creve Coeur, sold itself off in pieces after filing for bankruptcy a second time in 2015. For an industry that has long made St. Louis its corporate home, things aren’t looking good, but St. Louis surely won’t feel as much pain as the mining communities themselves. It’s far from most of the labor-intensive mines that have been shedding thousands of workers as demand for coal wanes. Near barge operators and railroad connections essential to transport vast quantities of the black rock, St. Louis long housed the offices of coal companies that operated the nearby mines of Southern Illinois. As coal production shifted west in the 1980s to the giant surface mines of Wyoming and Montana, St. Louis made sense for companies that operated mines both east and west of the Mississippi River.
