CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- It's been more than a century since J.P. Morgan, Andrew Carnegie and other U.S. steel barons built mining empires that dominated life across Central Appalachia's coalfields, securing fuel for their mills.

Decades after tough economic times forced steelmakers to abandon company towns and sell their coal mines, 21st-century steelmakers are back in the hunt for coal.

Absent from a global buying spree are the U.S. companies.

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.

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 Group, a virtually unknown American company with 85 million tons of reserves and mines producing about 1.5 million tons of coal in West Virginia and Virginia.

International mining conglomerate BHP Billiton Ltd. is attempting a takeover of rival London-based Rio Tinto, a deal that would combine the world's No. 2 and No. 3 iron ore miners.

The price of the U.S. coal used to make the coke that fuels the blast furnaces can go for as much as $250 a ton. Just last year, the cost was closer to $90.

Steelmakers already face pressure from customers -- manufacturers that make things such as automobiles, aircraft, washing machines and refrigerators. Steel producers are doing everything they can to control soaring prices for iron ore, metallurgical coal and scrap steel.

"Obviously everybody wants to have their own low-cost materials," said Charles Bradford, an industry analyst.

The U.S. steel industry was seriously wounded over the past two decades amid labor costs and inefficiencies.

Even U.S. Steel, which signed a historic deal with union workers several years ago and had done better than survive, has not announced any coal acquisitions.

The Pittsburgh company did hold onto substantial coking operations, an enormous boost in the current skyrocketing commodities climate.

Steelmakers overseas, however, are taking a page from the playbook of U.S. producers of yesteryear.

Nearly 100 years ago, giants such as Pennsylvania's Bethlehem Steel controlled everything from the coal coming out of the ground, to the towns where miners lived, and some even dominated industry in finished products.

U.S. Steel produced about 200 million tons of coal from its West Virginia operations, and the company did the same thing in eastern Kentucky. It sold the last vestiges of its mining operations in 2003.

To Bradford, only time will tell whether ArcelorMittal and other big steel players are making savvy business decisions or setting themselves up for the same fate that befell U.S. Steel's once thriving coal operations.