Donald Trump attracted significant electoral support from voters in coal-producing areas because of his support for the fuel

Donald Trump had just been confirmed as the Republican Party nominee for that year's presidential election when, on 5 May 2016, he took to the stage in Charleston, the state capital of West Virginia, with John Denver's 'Take Me Home, Country Roads' blasting in the background.

Surrounded by miners in overalls and hard hats, brandishing banners with the motto 'Trump Digs Coal', his message to the 14,000-strong audience went down well.

Mr Trump said: "You know, we're sending our jobs to Mexico. China is taking our jobs. Japan. They're all taking our jobs, folks. That's all going to change very rapidly, I promise.

Image: The US president has attracted criticism from environmental campaigners for his support of coal

"But the miners don't want to leave anyway. Is that right? You want to stay here. You want to open the mines. We're going to open the mines…you watch what happens.

"If I win, we're going to bring those miners back."


Mr Trump reminded his audience that, in March that year, his rival Hillary Clinton, had told CNN: "We are going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business."

And he concluded: "Get ready, because you are going to be working your asses off."

The miners - and others in West Virginia - took Mr Trump at his word.

He garnered 68.5% of the vote of West Virginia, the biggest share of the vote he won in any state during the presidential election, while the state was only one of two - Oklahoma was the other - in which Mr Trump won every county.

Mrs Clinton's performance was the worst by a candidate from either major party in West Virginia for more than a century.

Among Mr Trump's most influential backers in the state before, during and after the election was Bob Murray, founder and chief executive of Murray Energy, America's largest privately-owned coal mining company and the country's third largest in terms of production.

Image: Bob Murray (l) is a central figure in the US coal industry

As recently as July this year, 79-year old Mr Murray was banging the drum for Mr Trump, hosting a fundraising event for the president in Wheeling, West Virginia.

Donations of at least $150 per attendee were sought and, in a letter to invitees, Mr Murray wrote: "The future of the coal industry and our family livelihoods depend on President Trump being re-elected."

Unfortunately, for Mr Murray and his 7,000 employees, Murray Energy - which owns 17 mines in West Virginia, Alabama, Ohio, Utah, Illinois and Kentucky - has today filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. It is the eighth US coal mining company to do so during the last year.

It is unlikely to be the last. America's shale revolution means that the coal industry is being hammered by cheap competition from natural gas. The upshot has been that a number of large energy generators have converted their coal-fired power plants to gas-fired alternatives. The price of renewable generation has also fallen.

After Mr Trump was elected, Mr Murray lobbied the White House for regulation that would oblige power companies to favour coal over other energy sources, to take the United States out of the Paris climate accord and sweep away tax credits for wind and solar power generators.

Mr Murray, who has also stepped down as a chief executive today but who will remain as chairman, argued that America was putting its national security at risk by becoming over-reliant on natural gas.

Mr Trump only went so far. He pulled the US out of the climate accord but did not scrap the tax credit for renewables or adopt any of Mr Murray's other recommendations.

That only served to intensify the pressure on Murray Energy which, in response, cut its coal production by a sixth between 2014 and 2018. Adding to the company's pain was a crash in the price of coal destined for the export markets.

Signs that a crunch was looming came when, earlier this month, the company missed an interest payment on its $1.7bn worth of debt in order to buy time for a restructuring.

That debt is at the heart of today's announcement. Murray said it had reached an agreement with lenders who are owed 60% of that $1.7bn. It has also secured access to a new $350m credit facility to enable it to continue trading while it has bankruptcy protection.

Mr Murray said today: "Although a bankruptcy filing is not an easy decision, it became necessary to access liquidity and best position [for] Murray Energy and its affiliates for the future of our employees and customers and our long term success."

Image: The wider industry is feeling the pinch from weakening production

Today's events, however, carry significance to former miners as well.

The Wall Street Journal reported today that the company's $7.6bn worth of liabilities, as of the end of last year, include some $1.9bn worth of unfunded retirement benefits and a further $152.5m worth of obligations to compensate 25,000 former miners suffering from pneumoconiosis or 'black lung'.

Murray Energy is the last major US miner that employs workers who are members of the United Mine Workers of America and which still pays into the miners' pension plan set up by the union in 1974.

The plan currently pays the pensions of 82,000 retired miners and is due to pay them for a further 20,000 current and former miners who have yet to start drawing them.

There are now concerns that some of those benefits may be lost and that both current and former miners will lose some of those benefits.

Joe Manchin, the Democratic Senator for West Virginia, tweeted today: "If Murray rejects the UMWA pension plan obligations in Chapter 11 bankruptcy, the UMWA pension fund will be insolvent by 2020. Before last night it was projected to be insolvent by 2022."

Meanwhile, in coal mining states like West Virginia, the effects of redundancies made by other big mining companies such as Peabody Energy - once owned by the UK conglomerate Hanson - in recent months is already beginning to bite.

Suppliers to the coal industry have started to lay off staff following a drop in demand for kit such as drilling equipment.

Local tax revenues have been whittled away while finances are being stretched following an increase in drug-related crime.

It is not over-egging it to say that the US coal industry is in a death spiral. And the effects of that will be felt far beyond the coal industry.

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