CONSOL Energy (NYSE: CNX) said in a brief Aug. 2 statement that it has closed on its previously announced agreement to sell the Miller Creek and Fola coal mine complexes in southern West Virginia to Southeastern Land LLC.
CONSOL said in its July 26 quarterly earnings report that it had entered into deals to sell these properties. The Miller Creek Complex has an active surface mining operation, which produced 2.1 million tons in 2015, and two underground mines, which are idle. Fola Mining is a closed surface mining operation. The Miller Creek and Fola Mining Complexes each have 114 million tons of owned and leased coal reserves.
This divestiture, the latest of several coal mine/property sales in recent years, further pares down CONSOL’s coal holdings to its three longwall mines (Bailey, Enlow Fork and Harvey) in the Pittsburgh coal seam in southwest Pennsylvania. Minority shares of those operations are held by the recently-created spin-off CNX Coal Resources.
CONSOL doesn’t identify the backing for Southeastern Land LLC. The only company by that name in the U.S. Office of Surface Mining’s ownership-and-control database was registered in 2014 to take on permits for coal mines in eastern Kentucky, with Ted McGinnis (33%) and Jim Booth (67%) listed as co-owners. The only Southeastern Land LLC currently listed in the West Virginia Secretary of State’s corporate database is the McGinnis/Booth company.
CONSOL Energy is a Pittsburgh-based energy producer, and one of the largest independent natural gas exploration, development and production companies, with operations centered in the major shale formations of the Appalachian basin.
