Coal Holes

Good news for Canadian lumbermen and pulpmakers, bad news for British and U. S. coal shippers, was announced by Ontario’s gruff, industrious Premier Howard Ferguson last week. Drilling profound holes in the rocky banks of North Ontario’s Abitibi River, geologists of the Ontario Department of Mines had struck a coal formation estimated to contain 20 million tons of lignite.

“Up to the present,” said Premier Ferguson, “the seams have been located by drill to a length of one mile, and a width of one-half mile, and of an established thickness averaging 18 ft. This in itself constitutes a reserve of several million tons, and it is in every way likely that a seam of such thickness will be found to be more extensive. It is anticipated that further drilling will prove the deposit to be truly a large and important one. The present ten holes merely constitute a start in our exploratory program.”

On the site of the exploratory holes, provincial geologists claimed the entire district for the Ontario government, to prevent land speculating. Chief geologist W. S. Dyer estimated that the newly discovered lignite could be profitably marketed at from $5 to $6 a ton, exclusive of freight.

Since U. S. lignite sells at from $2 to $3 a ton, exclusive of freight, the chief value of the new beds lies in the fact that they are in the immediate vicinity of the coal burning Canadian paper mills, the largest of which, the Kapuskasing, burns 500 tons of coal daily. With coal mines within sound of their buzz saws, Abitibi pulpmakers saw a chance to make newsprint still more cheaply for U. S. newspapers. Lignite, or “wood-coal,” is geologically half way between turflike peat and smudgy bituminous coal. It is hard, looks like dirty brown slate, burns without smoke, is clean to handle. Mined in the U. S. in North and South Dakota and Texas, it is useful in domestic furnaces, or as pulverized fuel in manufacturing plants.

Only because the average U. S. citizen is unfamiliar with it is lignite not more widely used in the U. S. During the War the government asked Dakota citizens to burn lignite in their furnaces as an economy measure. Now coal dealers can scarcely make Dakotans accept anything else.