Web Sites Progress

The West Virginia Coal Association website was met with over 4500 visits for the month of December.  The total page views for the month exceeded 11,000 with new content constantly being added.  The site saw 73 percent of those visits from new visitors with over 70 percent of all visitors coming from search engines. Lastly, the site saw visits from over 70 different countries and territories.
 
The Friends of Coal website continues to attract and interest and new visitors from all over the world.  In fact, we saw traffic from 50 different countries and territories while in total the site saw over 2,000 visitors last month.  In total, over 7,000 page views and over 77 percent were first time visitors.

Companies in the News

INTERNATIONAL RESOURCE PARTNERS LP ANNOUNCES THE ACQUISITION OF MILLER BROS. COAL, LLC
International Resource Partners LP (“IRP”) today announced that it has acquired substantially all of the coal reserves and certain operating assets of Miller Bros. Coal, LLC, the operating subsidiary of Clearwater Natural Resources, LP of Prestonsburg, KY.
 
Miller Bros. Coal produces steam coal in Floyd, Knott, Breathitt, Johnson and Martin Counties in Eastern Kentucky and controls over 35 million tons of reserves with the ability to produce up to 3 million tons of coal annually from its 5 mining complexes.
 
With the acquisition of Miller Bros. Coal, IRP controls over 80 million tons of steam and metallurgical coal and has the ability to produce over 5 million tons annually from its surface and underground mines in West Virginia and Kentucky. In addition, IRP’s coal sales and marketing company, Logan & Kanawha, has increased its access to the CSX and Norfolk Southern rail lines and the Big Sandy River.

Tug Valley Mining Institute

The TVMI will not have a meeting in January or February, their next meeting will be held March 18 with Guest Speaker, Jim McCaffrey.  Location and time are yet to be determined but will be posted in this publication when they become available.

Want to see what mountaintop mining really looks like?

The practice of mountaintop mining was the subject of a recent episode of Decisionmakers, a news feature of the West Virginia Media Network with host Bray Carey.

If you want to see what mountaintop mining really looks like --- what it really means for southern West Virginia -- take a look at this video.

http://www.boomboxradio.net/boombox/PlayerSetup/Players/WOWKTVPlayer.aspx?FileId=220918_wowktv
 
http://www.boomboxradio.net/boombox/PlayerSetup/Players/WOWKTVPlayer.aspx?FileId=220923_wowktv

http://www.boomboxradio.net/boombox/PlayerSetup/Players/WOWKTVPlayer.aspx?FileId=220928_wowktv
  

Coal Seam

 The June edition of "The Coal Seam" television show is now running on the West Virginia Library Commission Network as well as public access channels around the state. This edition features a discussion of the economic and social impact of mountaintop mining. Guests include Art Kirkendoll, president of the Logan County Commission, and Roger Horton, president of Citizens for Coal.  They joined host Chris Hamilton for a free-ranging discussion of the role mountaintop mining plays in the economy of the southern coalfield counties.  This is the fourth episode of the “Coal Seam”, with each one playing for a month, following its original production.  The Library Commission’s Network is available on the public access channels throughout West Virginia.  Each of the four editions are available on the Association’s webpage at  http://www.wvcoal.com.  Next month’s edition will continue the discussion of mountain top mining and will feature a discussion of Coalfield Development Bill, passed during the recent special session of the West Virginia Legislature.