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Laid-Off Miner Sees Evidence on the Ground of Coal Industry's Turnaround

The U.S. coal industry is seeing a surge in production and profits this year, capitalizing on President Trump's repeated promises to end the so-called "war on coal" and put miners back to work.

Fox Business Network's Jeff Flock reported from a coal plant outside Chicago, in Romeoville, explaining that Arch Coal Inc. - which filed for bankruptcy in Jan. 2016 - reported net income of $68.4 million in the third quarter of 2017, compared with net income of $37.2 million, in the second quarter.

Revenues for the company rose 11.5 percent to $613.5 million in the third quarter.

Flock said it's not just Arch Coal which is experiencing the uptick. Peabody Energy - the world's largest private-sector coal company - reported "powerful results" in the third quarter after emerging from bankruptcy earlier this year.

Overall, U.S. coal production jumped nearly 8 percent in the past year, a far cry from the more than 30 percent decline in production over the past decade.

"That's a lot of good news in the coal patch," said Flock, acknowledging that coal mining remains unlikely to return to return to the highs of years past due largely to the increased use of natural gas.

He said natural gas is the preferred source of electricity generation because it's cleaner and cheaper to produce.

Watch the report above.

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