“So as once we talked about getting [coal] from McAlester to Muskogee, now we’re talking about getting it from Sallisaw to Peking. But the dynamics are the same. What does it cost to get it? What’s the cost to get it from here to there? And what is the market? Is the demand high enough to cover what it costs to get it?”

– Bob Blackburn with the Oklahoma History Center, on a stalled mining project in eastern Oklahoma. Developers originally planned to sell coking coal to steel manufacturers in China, but a drop in the price of coal has suspended activity at the mine (Source: n.pr/1FM5p2z)

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Carly Putnam joined OK Policy in 2013. As Policy Director, she supervises policy research and strategy. She previously worked as an OK Policy intern, and she was OK Policy's health care policy analyst through July 2020. She graduated from the University of Tulsa in 2013. As a student, she was a participant in the National Education for Women (N.E.W.) Leadership Institute and interned with Planned Parenthood. Carly is a graduate of the Oklahoma Center for Nonprofits Nonprofit Management Certification; the Oklahoma Developmental Disabilities Council’s Partners in Policymaking; The Mine, a social entrepreneurship fellowship in Tulsa; and Leadership Tulsa Class 62. She currently serves on the boards of Restore Hope Ministries and The Arc of Oklahoma. In her free time, she enjoys reading, cooking, and doing battle with her hundred year-old house.

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