Mine shutdowns in coal region bring uncertainty

GILLETTE, Wyo.— At two of the world’s biggest coal mines, the finances got so bad that their owner couldn’t even get toilet paper on credit.

Warehouse technician Melissa Worden divvied up what remained of the last case, giving four rolls to each mine and two to the mine supply facility where she worked. Days later, things got worse.

Mine owner Blackjewel LLC filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on July 1. Worden at first figured the accounts would get settled quickly and vendors of everything from copy paper to parts for housesized dump trucks would soon be back to doing normal business with the mines.

“The consensus was: In 30 days, we’ll look back on this, and we made it through, and we’ll be up and running, and it’s a fresh start,” Worden said.

What happened instead has shaken the top coalproducing region in the United States like a charge of mining explosive. Blackjewel furloughed most of its Wyoming employees and shut down Eagle Butte and Belle Ayr mines, the first idled by hardship since coal mining in the Powder River Basin exploded in the 1970s.

It’s a big hit to the region straddling northeastern Wyoming and southeastern Montana, where coal has quietly supported the economies of both states for decades and fuels a shrinking number of power plants in 28 states.

Negotiations that could reopen the two Wyoming mines under new ownership — potentially previous owner Bristol, Tennesseebased Contura Energy — are stalled more than two months later. Some 600 employees remain off the job. They lost health insurance coverage in late August.

And doubts are growing about the longterm viability of the region’s coal mines — particularly Eagle Butte and Belle Ayr, the fourth and sixthbiggest in the U.S. by production, respectively.

“I don’t think we’ll ever be that naive again,” said Worden, 44.

Blackjewel, based in Milton, W.Va., told its Wyoming employees this week that the mines might be up and running soon and to let the company know if they wanted their jobs back.

But with coal in longterm decline, how the basin might eventually scale down production to a sustainable level has become a big question, said Rob Godby, director of the Center for Energy Economics and Public Policy at the University of Wyoming.

“The irony here — and it’s really a cruel irony — is everybody is focused on getting these miners back to work. But really the solution to creating a healthy industry is some mines close,” Godby said.