Arch Coal

Arch Coal (NYSE: ACI) 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 Coal is the second largest supplier of coal in the U.S. - second only to Peabody Energy and claims to supply 12% of the domestic market. Demand comes mainly from generators of electricity.

Arch Coal operates 21 active mines and controls approximately 3.1 billion tons of proven and probable coal reserves, located in Central Appalachia, the Powder River Basin, and the Western Bituminous regions. The company operates mines in Colorado, Kentucky, Utah, Virginia, West Virginia and Wyoming, and is headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri. The company sells a substantial amount of its coal to producers of electric power, steel producers and industrial facilities.

History

Arch Mineral Corporation was founded in 1969 as a partnership between Ashland Oil (now Ashland, Inc.) and the Hunt family of Dallas, Texas. Ashland Coal, Inc. was formed in 1975 as a subsidiary of Ashland Oil. The privately held Arch Mineral Corporation merged with Ashland Coal, Inc. in July 1997, creating the present-day company.

Politics

Arch Coal PAC is named, along with other major coal producers, as a donor to the 2004 election campaign in West Virginia. 2004 was a record-setting year for donations made by the coal industry.

Competitors

Top Arch Coal competitors are :

• CONSOL Energy
• Massey Energy
• Peabody Energy

Environmental impact

The company practices mountaintop removal mining, which is controversial because it reduces the height of mountaintops (sometimes as much as by 600 to 800 feet (240 m)), removes all vegetation and places mining waste or overburden into mountain streams, causing flooding, erosion and water contamination. Arch Coal's West Virginia mining operations in the Appalachian Mountains were the subject of a critical documentary in 2002 on Now with Bill Moyers on PBS.

Arch's Dal-Tex mining operations above the town of Blair, West Virginia were the subject of a 1998 US News and World Report story "Shear Madness" by Penny Loeb. The story documented the impacts of mountaintop removal on communities close to the mines and their subsequent depopulation. A landmark 1999 lawsuit brought by the West Virginia Highlands Conservancy, Bragg v. Robertson was the first successful citizen lawsuit to stop Arch's proposed mountaintop removal valley fill. The fill would have buried several miles of stream at Pigeon Roost Hollow near Blair, West Virginia.

In his ruling for the plaintiffs, Judge Charles H. Haden stated that "If there is any life form that cannot acclimate to life deep in a rubble pile, it is eliminated. No effect on related environmental values is more adverse than obliteration...Under a valley fill the water quality of the stream becomes zero. Because there is no stream, there is no water quality."

References

1. ^ ^{a b c} Arch Coal's annual income statement via Wikinvest
2. ^ ^{a b} Arch Coal's annual balance sheet via Wikinvest
3. ^ Hoovers.com fact-sheet - (retrieved 10/10/06)
4. ^ Hoovers.com Fact-sheet on Peabody Energy (Retrieved 10/10/06)
5. ^ Official Biography - (retrieved 10/10/06)
6. ^ ^{a b} http://www.hoovers.com/arch-coal,-inc./--ID__10134--/free-co-factsheet.xhtml
7. ^ As of December 31, 2005. Source Yahoo! Finance profile (retrieved 10/10/06)
8. ^ Forbes profile (retrieved 10/10/06)
9. ^ http://www.wvoter-owned.org/news/2006/01_09.html
10. ^ http://www.epa.gov/region3/mtntop/eis.htm EPA Environmental Impact Statement
11. ^ Now with Bill Moyers, "The Cost of Coal"
12. ^ Now with Bill Moyers, "The Cost of Coal" Update
13. ^ http://www.usnews.com/usnews/culture/articles/970811/archive_007620.htm
14. ^ http://www.tlpj.org/briefs/mountpi.htm
15. ^ http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0CE5D61F38F933A05753C1A96F958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all

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