Coal-mining region

Coal mining regions are significant resource extraction industries in many parts of the world.

They provide a large amount of the fossil fuel energy in the world economy.

In South Africa coal is mined in several regions, mainly in the East Rand around Witbank, in the Vaal valley around the Vaal Triangle, the Waterberg in the Limpopo Province and at Dundee and Newcastle in northern KwaZulu Natal.

[7][8] While Mongolia's output is approximately only 5 million tonnes of coal per year, it will grow significantly given its proximity to China.

[9] Coal mining in the Philippines has a long history dating back to the 1800s during the Spanish colonization of the islands.

Russian coal miners have recently campaigned for improvements in their working conditions, leading to some reform.

Other coal producing regions include the Pechora basin of brown coal in northern European Russia, the Kansk-Achinsk basin with total reserves 600 billion tons of lignite centered on Kansk in southern Krasnoyarsk Krai, Tunguska coal basin in eastern Siberia located between the Khatanga River to the Trans-Siberian railway and between the Yenisei and Lena rivers, and the Lena coal basin which is mainly in the Sakha Republic with some in Krasnoyarsk Krai.

It runs across Wallonia, passing from Dour, in Borinage, in the west, to Verviers in the east, through Mons, La Louvière, Charleroi, Namur, Huy, and Liège, following the valleys of the rivers Haine, Sambre, Meuse and Vesdre.

[citation needed] There are also substantial reserves of coal in Sanski Most, Ugljevik, Gacko and Stanari.

There are large coal deposits in Asturias and León which helped fuel the Industrial Revolution in Spain; these have mostly been exhausted.

Britain had major coal-mining activity in the past, but since the 1980s coal mining has been in decline due to the increased use of natural gas in power stations and cheaper imports.

The "Black Country" is a loosely defined area of the English West Midlands which includes the north and west of Birmingham and the south and east of Wolverhampton, famous for its coal mines (especially in Staffordshire), its coal coking operations, and other heavy industry, including iron foundries and steel mills that used local coal to fire their furnaces, all of which produced a level of air pollution that had few equals anywhere in the world.

The Elk Valley, located in the southeast corner of British Columbia, is host to one of the world's largest deposits of hard coking coal.

The states with the largest recoverable coal reserves are, in descending order, Wyoming, West Virginia, Illinois, and Montana.