14 Coal Stocks to Consider Buying Now

“Sometimes, we get a little parochial in Canada — we think that the whole world is entirely focused on tar sands as the biggest problem. What we’re saying here is that it’s one of the biggest problems.” Canada’s oil sands are midway down the pack of the world’s climate change villains, according to a new Greenpeace report ranking potential carbon emissions from the globe’s top energy developments.

Coal will nearly overtake oil as the dominant energy source by 2017, and only a drop in world gas prices could curb the use of the dirtier fossil fuel in the absence of high carbon prices, the International Energy Agency said. The IEA, the energy agency for developed countries, said earlier this year that without a major shift away from coal, average global temperatures could rise by 6 degrees Celsius by 2050, leading to devastating climate change.

Reuters published a great analysis last week of the future of the US labor market, and the report's main conclusion shouldn't surprise anyone who's followed this blog for a while: the US manufacturing sector will experience a renaissance of sorts and may even see a near-term uptick in jobs, but longstanding, systemic factors - mainly continuing improvements in productivity - w

David Hunkar submits: An article in the Wall Street Journal Tuesday (subscription required) discusses China’s voracious demand for coal. A couple of important points from this article:

China has been hungry to power its country for more than 1.3 billion residents, and takeouts of commodity-related companies is one way to fill its tall energy order. We told you about one merger and acquisition (M&A) deal out of China. Last year, Sinopec acquired Canadian energy company Daylight Energy for $2.1 billion in cash, a whopping 120 percent premium to Daylight’s share price prior to the announcement.

China has been hungry to power its country for more than 1.3 billion residents, and takeouts of commodity-related companies is one way to fill its tall energy order. We told you about one merger and acquisition (M&A) deal out of China. Last year, Sinopec acquired Canadian energy company Daylight Energy for $2.1 billion in cash, a whopping 120 percent premium to Daylight’s share price prior to the announcement. With this purchase, Sinopec gains access to more than 300,000 acres rich with oil and natural gas.

Gregor Macdonald submits: The latest BP Statistical Review was published in London this morning, and following a theme presented for years at our blog, global growth in coal consumption continues to soar. Now that global oil production is flat, and is no longer able to fund new industrial expansion, coal remains the cheap BTU and of course the preferred energy source of the Developing World (non-OECD). For another year, the world has turned to coal.