Question-and-Answer Session
[Operator Instructions]. And our first question will come from the line of Leon Duval with catapult. Please proceed.
Leon Duval - Catapult
Hi good morning.
Paul M. Barbas - President and Chief Executive Officer
Good morning
Leon Duval - Catapult
I'm just looking at the slide where you guys give your fuel costs and hedging. And you talk about the 2008 average cost being $41.25 versus last quarter where you had same slide and you were also 100% hedged in '08. The price was $47.50. Could you walk us through what changed there?
Paul M. Barbas - President and Chief Executive Officer
Leon, what did we have there, I think various comparability going over the last two quarter is optimizing our coal position with the performance of the Scrubber at both Killen and Stuart. We were able to burn some of the higher sulfur, lower cost coals and we've been able to essentially remarket some of the higher priced coals that we've (inaudible) previously, so we anticipate that activity going on for not just remainder of 2008, but through the forecast period here. And I think that's really been the beauty of getting the Scrubbers on-line early. It does allow us to optimize our positions and that's something we are doing very aggressively.
Leon Duval - Catapult
So, if we look at the 2009 numbers, those have the potential of still coming down as well?
Paul M. Barbas - President and Chief Executive Officer
We will continue, like I said, to optimize. We would love to be successful in '09 as we have been in '08 and we will continue to focus upon that, but we are aggressively optimizing to the best of our ability.
Leon Duval - Catapult
Fair enough. Okay, thank you.
John J. Gillen - Senior Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer
Leon, the other thing I might add to that is just in case people are doing it, the straight math calculation of that difference and then the amount of tons we burn, part of that as Paul indicated is optimizing both the coals we can burn and the decision to whether we dispatch our plants or purchase power. So part of the reason for purchase power increase in cost or that it didn't go down as much as we hoped is that we were buying power not running our plants but selling excess or high cost coal and getting a net benefit. But it's not nearly to the extent of getting the ability to keep the full $6 a ton.
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