Coal Town / Gas Town

St. Louis is home to three of the largest coal companies in the world.  It is the capital of coal in the US and maybe the world.  And...

* Peabody profit falls 69% in Q4
* Arch Coal Profit Plummets 98% in Q4
* Patriot profit plummets 83% but still surpasses estimates

It doesn't look like coal is doing well.  St. Louis also has a gas company.  If we read financial statements made by Laclede Gas for the same period it seems their profit fell a little too, but not at all at the same level of severity.

We're living in a world that is slowly coming around to the understanding that fossil fuels are bad.  Dependency, climate change, and smog are not nice things.  Obama's new budget wants to remove 34 billion dollars in subsidies from the oil and coal industries.  This will make energy from these two fossil fuels a little more expensive, and push the market to purchasing other sources:  solar, wind, and natural gas.  Methane is a fossil fuel, a greenhouse gas, and can even be collected in a semi-green way:  from wastewater treatment plants.  Yes indeed, what we flush down our toilets could power homes.  We can also collect natural gas from landfills, compost dumps, and various other natural places.  Collecting and burning methane does produce CO2, but we must keep in mind that CO2 is less harmful than CH4.

Houston, the oil town, and St. Louis, the coal town, will fall from their perches.  The rising stars are the cities that can put together good green energy companies.  In the mean time, the city that controls the countries natural gas will be the winner.

If the US is the Saudi Arabia of natural gas, then Oklahoma City is the Riyadh. Three of the biggest gas companies around, Chesapeake, Devon, and Sandridge, are headquartered there.  They're changing the skyline.

Looking at the gas pipelines around America, Oklahoma City does stand out, but so does Houston.  If coal goes, St. Louis goes.  If oil goes, Houston can fall back on its gas.  If oil and coal both go, then Oklahoma City will have a brief surge.

I'm curious to know though who the green leaders will be.  Desert cities will probably pull ahead with solar.  Wind seems up in the air.  There's good wind at sea, and there's good wind on the plains. 
I personally don't believe biofuels are sensible, but algae might change my mind.  Supposedly St. Louis is the King of Algae.  If biofuels from algae become big, maybe St. Louis will be on top.  Maybe San Francisco.  I don't know.

Obama did mention clean coal in his state of the union speech.  Maybe Peabody isn't out of the fight yet.
Regardless, I'm going to be watching Oklahoma City.