Upgrades to two US East Coast coal terminals could add 7 million short tons per year of coal export capacity in the next two years. CSX last week confirmed that it plans to begin moving coal out of Philadelphia this year and out of South Carolina by 2013 through third-party facilities.

The railroad did not name the facilities, but market participants said that the facilities are Kinder Morgan's Fairless Hills terminal in Philadelphia and its Shipyard River Terminal in Charleston.

Mr Chris Jenkins CSX vice president of coal and automotive groups, at a Wall Street analyst conference said that “CSX will have some investments to make to reach the Charleston terminal. We go there already, but there will be a little bit of track construction required to support steady flow of unit coal trains. We are not able to say exactly how much tonnage will flow through those facilities, but I think it is worth saying that they do give a nice upward boost in terms of throughput capacity on the network.”

According to Kinder Morgan, the CSX and Norfolk Southern-served Fairless Hills terminal has 400,000st of storage capacity and the SRT terminal configured for coal imports has 50,000st for ground storage.

(Sourced from Argus Media)