All things pass so they say. When I was growing up in the UK, coal was dying. Mr. Scargill and his miners union held the country to ransom trying to save unprofitable coal pits and the miner’s jobs. My teenage years were spent like many of my era looking forward to the resulting blackouts as it meant missing school. My father was home 4-days a week as well as the country worked the 3-day week. The British coal industry was given its final death sentence in the Thatcher years as cheap surface mined coal from South Africa and elsewhere meant that most British coal was no longer profitable to mine. It had dire consequences for many men and families and for many villages and towns in places like Wales and the north of England. King Coal, at least in the UK, was dying and making ground for King Crude. As I emerged from college with my Ph.D. in Geology seeking a job in the oil industry, the oil price collapsed to touch $8/bbl. Suddenly, geologist jobs were hard to find and many were being laid off and let go. I was fortunate enough to be recruited by BP Exploration and
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