Major Layoffs At PBS Coals

Scott Detrow

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Scott Detrow is a congressional correspondent for NPR. He also co-hosts the NPR Politics Podcast.

Detrow joined NPR in 2015 to cover the presidential election. He focused on the Republican side of the 2016 race, spending time on the campaign trail with Donald Trump, and also reported on the election's technology and data angles.

Detrow worked as a statehouse reporter for member stations WITF in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and KQED in San Francisco, California. He has also covered energy policy for NPR's StateImpact project, where his reports on Pennsylvania's hydraulic fracturing boom won a DuPont-Columbia and national Edward R. Murrow Award in 2013.

July 20, 2012 | 12:38 PM

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The entrance to a Virginia coal mine

A week after NPR examined how cheap natural gas prices are undermining the coal industry, PBS Coals is laying off 225 employees. As the AP reports, that’s about a quarter of the company’s workforce:

PBS Coals Inc., of Somerset, issued a statement Friday announcing the cutbacks, but did not immediately specify which mines will be idled. The company says the production schedules for mines that remain open will be “adjusted to matchmarket demand.”
PBS reported earlier this year that it had roughly 1,000 employees.
Company president and chief executive officer D. Lynn Shanks says “foreign and domestic coal markets remain soft due to weak economic growth and activity.” But Shanks says “escalating costs and uncertainty generated by recently advanced EPA regulations and interpretations have created a challenging business climate for the entire coal industry.“