Big steel makes coal play; US companies absent

Bits of that history are starting to repeat themselves. Decades after tough economic times forced steel makers to abandon company towns and sell their coal mines, 21st century steelmakers are back in the hunt for coal.

This time, rather than the Carnegies and Morgans, it is the Mittals and the Mordashovs.

Absent from a global buying spree are the U.S. companies that wrote the book on owning everything from the commodities used to make steel to the finished product, such as Bethlehem Steel Co.'s massive shipbuilding operations.

The U.S. steel industry, badly damaged from plummeting steel prices and legacy costs, spun off coal operations years ago and have been more hesitant, or do not have the billions, to spend locking up coal again.

"I bet you they wished right now that they still had the coal mines," said Charles Bradford, an industry analyst with Bradford Research/Soleil Securities.

That torch, however, has been passed overseas.

Luxembourg-based ArcelorMittal, the world's largest steel producer, recently upped its stake in Australia's Macarthur Coal, supplier of more than one-third of the world's pulverized coal. At the same time, ArcelorMittal was snapping up Mid Vol Coal Croup, a virtually unknown American company with 85 million tons of reserves and mines producing some 1.5 million tons of coal in West Virginia and Virginia. Terms have not been disclosed.

International mining conglomerate BHP Billiton Ltd. is attempting a $170 billion takeover of rival London-based Rio Tinto Inc., a deal that would combine the world's No. 2 and No. 3 iron ore miners. That buyout has come under European Union scrutiny because of a potential monopoly that could control the global prices of iron and coking coal.

Korean steel giant Posco has bought 10 percent of Macarthur Coal and Russian steelmaker OAO Severstal, under CEO Aleksey Aleksandrovich Mordashov, is openly shopping for coal mines.