Coal news and updates

Anthracite production jumps at Stockton mine

Anthracite production at Atlantic Coal’s Stockton mine to the end of October 2015 was up 26% on the same period last year at 164 328 short t.

Sales of clean anthracite jumped 18.5% over the same period to 151 382 short t, while sales of ROM anthracite – which the company only started to sell in Spring 2015 – were 69 205. Total sales were 220 589 over the 10 months to the end of October and compare to total sales of 127 780 short t over the same period last year.

"The excellent performance of our Stockton mine continues with record year-to-date production and sales,” said Atlantic Coal’s Managing Director, Steve Best. “As we still have two months of production and sales left in 2015 we are confident of beating our previous record production and sales by a significant margin.”

The company also said that it had uncovered the Mammoth seam in the current mining cut at the Stockton mine. The seam is almost solid anthracite, averaging 30 ft in thickness and containing very few old mine workings.

“Our investigation of old underground mine plans had indicated that that we were approaching areas of thick Mammoth seam which were largely unworked,” continued Best. “But as mining is never predictable we could not be certain of this. We are, however, now on our second cut of 30 ft thick almost solid Mammoth seam and this gives us a high degree of confidence that this will continue over the rest of the life of Stockton Mine."

The Stockton mine is part of the historic anthracite mining region in northeast Pennsylvania – an area that once saw production of over 100 million t but now produces about 2 million tpa of the speciality coal, which is used in a range of industures, including the steel industry and for water filtration, as well as for domestic heating.

source: http://www.worldcoal.com