This week the Port of Morrow Commission (located in Boardman, OR) announced that they had agreed to a lease with Salt Lake City based Ambre Energy for the construction of a new coal terminal on the Columbia River.
The terminal will be used to upload Powder River Basin coal to barges to be shipped down river to Longview, WA. In Longview, the coal will be sent to Asian markets for combustion.
Ambre Energy’s website states, “It is Ambre Energy’s intention to establish one of the few coal export facilities on the west coast of North America to provide access to growing Asia-Pacific markets for U.S. thermal coal.”
Boardman, OR is the location also of a coal plant that state and local environmentalists campaigned to have closed. It’s been announced that Boardman coal plant will be closing down by 2020.
Local, regional and national environmental and community groups have been organizing and building an opposition coalition to proposed coal ports in Longview, WA and Bellingham, WA. Beyond Ambre Energy, coal companies Arch Coal and Peabody Energy have also stated goals of building terminals to ship coal to Asian markets.
