The Powder River Basin is a geologic structural basin in southeast Montana and northeast Wyoming, about 120 miles (190 km) east to west and 200 miles (320 km) north to south, known for its extensive coal reserves. The former hunting grounds of the Oglala Lakota, the area is very sparsely populated and is known for its rolling grasslands and semiarid climate.
Peabody Energy coal mining operations in the Black Mesa plateau of the Four Corners region in the western United States began in the 1960s and ended in 2019. The plateau overlaps the reservations of the Navajo and Hopi Tribes.
Consol Energy Inc. is an American energy company with interests in coal headquartered in the suburb of Cecil Township, in the Southpointe complex, just outside Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In 2017, Consol formed two separate entities: CNX Resources Corporation and CONSOL Energy Inc. While CNX Resources Corp. focuses on natural gas, spin-off Consol Mining Corporation, now Consol Energy Inc. focuses on coal. In 2010, Consol was the leading producer of high-BTU bituminous coal in the United States and the U.S.'s largest underground coal mining company. The company employs more than 1,600 people.
Peabody Energy is a coal mining and energy company headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri. Its primary business consists of the mining, sale, and distribution of coal, which is purchased for use in electricity generation and steelmaking. Peabody also markets, brokers, and trades coal through offices in China, Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
The Western Fuels Association is a $400 million consortium of coal suppliers and coal-fired utilities based in Westminster, Colorado. Western Fuels Association supplies coal and transportation services to consumer-owned electric utilities in the Great Plains, Rocky Mountain and Southwest regions.
Peak coal is the peak consumption or production of coal by a human community. Global coal consumption peaked in 2013, and had dropped slightly by the end of the 2010s. The peak of coal's share in the global energy mix was in 2008, when coal accounted for 30% of global energy production. The decline in coal use is largely driven by consumption declines in the United States and Europe, as well as developed economies in Asia. In 2019, production increases in countries such as China, Indonesia, India, Russia and Australia compensated for the falls in the United States and Europe. However, coal's structural decline continued in the 2020s.
Arch Resources, previously known as Arch Coal, is an American coal mining and processing company. The company mines, processes, and markets bituminous and sub-bituminous coal with low sulfur content in the United States. Arch Resources is the second-largest supplier of coal in the United States, behind Peabody Energy. As of 2011 the company supplied 15% of the domestic market. Demand comes mainly from generators of electricity.
The Black Thunder Coal Mine is a surface coal mine in the U.S. state of Wyoming, located in the Powder River Basin which contains one of the largest deposits of coal in the world. Black Thunder is the second most productive mine in the United States, providing the US with 8% of its coal supply. In 2007, the mine produced 86,196,275 short tons of coal, nearly 20% of Wyoming's total coal production, and higher than 23 other individual coal producing states.
Coal mining is an industry in transition in the United States. Production in 2019 was down 40% from the peak production of 1,171.8 million short tons in 2008. Employment of 43,000 coal miners is down from a peak of 883,000 in 1923. Generation of electricity is the largest user of coal, being used to produce 50% of electric power in 2005 and 27% in 2018. The U.S. is a net exporter of coal. U.S. coal exports, for which Europe is the largest customer, peaked in 2012. In 2015, the U.S. exported 7.0 percent of mined coal.
Rio Tinto Energy America (RTEA) was a wholly owned American subsidiary of the England and Australia-based mining giant, the Rio Tinto Group, headquartered in Gillette, Wyoming, United States. The company, previously known as Kennecott Energy after another of Rio Tinto's American subsidiaries, was formed in 1993 when Rio Tinto purchased NERCO and placed that company's Spring Creek coal mine and Antelope coal mine under the RTEA umbrella. Subsequent acquisitions included the Cordero Mining Company, the Colowyo Coal Company, and the Jacobs Ranch coal mine. RTEA operated four mines in Wyoming and Montana, supplying fuel for the generation of approximately 6% of the United States' electricity consumption. The RTEA mines were spun off to Cloud Peak Energy in 2010.
The Belle Ayr mine is a coal mine located 18 miles southeast of Gillette, Wyoming in the United States in the coal-rich Powder River Basin. The mine is an open pit, "truck and shovel", mine producing a low-sulfur, sub-bituminous coal from the Wyodak-Anderson seam that is used for domestic energy generation. Coal produced by the mine is shipped to its customers via railroad. The mine is owned and operated by Blackjewel LLC after being acquired from Contura energy in 2017.
The CONSOL Energy Mine Map Preservation Project is a project to preserve and digitize maps of underground coal mines in Southwestern Pennsylvania.
The Wyodak mine is a coal mine in Wyodak, Wyoming, United States, located about 6 miles (9.7 km) east of Gillette in the coal-rich Powder River Basin.
÷Some of the more notable coal companies in Australia are the following:
The Kayenta mine was a surface coal mine operated by Peabody Western Coal Company on the Navajo Nation in northern Arizona from 1973 to 2019. About 400 acres were mined and reclaimed each year, providing about 8 million tons of coal annually to the Navajo Generating Station.
Coal mining in Wyoming has long been a significant part of the state's economy. Wyoming has been the largest producer of coal in the United States since 1986, and in 2018, coal mines employed approximately 1% of the state’s population. In 2013, there were 17 active coal mines in Wyoming, which produced 388 million short tons, 39 percent of all the coal mined in the US, and more than three times the production of second-place West Virginia. Market forces, including the low price of natural gas from the fracking boom—coal's main competition—contributed to the steep drop in coal production in the 2000s as electricity generation switched from coal to gas.
The North Antelope Rochelle Mine is the largest coal mine in the world. Located in Campbell County, Wyoming, about 65 miles (105 km) south of Gillette, it produced 85.3 million tons of coal in 2019.
American Consolidated Natural Resources, previously known as Murray Energy, is a US-based coal mining company. It is the fourth largest coal producer in the country, and the largest privately-owned coal company. Founded in 1988 by Robert E. Murray, the company filed for bankruptcy in 2019. The company gained notoriety following the collapse of the Crandall Canyon Mine in 2007, following a number of citations and fines for safety practices at the site.
CNX Resources Corporation is a natural gas company based in Pittsburgh with operations in the Appalachian Basin, primarily in the Marcellus Shale and Utica Shale in Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia. It also develops coalbed methane properties in Virginia along with a methane capture and abatement program. The company also has extensive midstream operations and is one of the largest producers of natural gas in the United States.
