Coal exports from the port continued to tank in the first six months of 2016, following a portwide, year-over-year drop of about 35 percent in 2015.
Hampton Roads is the biggest coal-exporting port in North America. Business, however, for the first half of the year still sank, down nearly 30 percent from the same period in 2015.
The port’s three big coal terminals – Norfolk Southern Corp.’s Pier 6 terminal at Lamberts Point, and Kinder Morgan’s Pier IX and Dominion Terminal Associates in Newport News – exported 10.87 million tons for the first half of 2016, down from 15.46 million in the same period in 2015, according to T. Parker Host, a Norfolk-based ship agency.
Pier IX saw the largest year-over-year drop in exports so far in 2016 – nearly 48 percent. Dominion Terminal Associates, or DTA, was off by about 28 percent and Norfolk Southern’s Pier 6 by roughly 20 percent.
