U.S. Coal Miners Arch, CONSOL Agree to Tie the Knot in 2025

Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--Two major players in the coal industry are joining hands, possibly to dominate the North American market: CONSOL Energy Incorporated (NYSE:CEIX) (Canonsburg, Pennsylvania) and Arch Resources Incorporated (NYSE:ARCH) (St. Louis, Missouri) agreed Wednesday to merge into a new company, tentatively to be called Core Natural Resources, with CONSOL and Arch owning about 55% and 45%, respectively. The merger is expected to close by the end of first-quarter 2025, subject to regulatory and stockholder approvals. Industrial Info is tracking more than $2 billion worth of active and proposed projects from Arch and CONSOL, across a dozen operational mines.

Click on the image at right for a graph detailing operational mines from CONSOL and Arch that would be owned by Core Natural Resources, by U.S. state.

Pro forma, Core Natural Resources would have a market capitalization of roughly $5.2 billion, according to Arch and CONSOL. The companies say they sold a total 101 million tons of coal to steelmaking, industrial and power-generation customers in 2023. Core would trade under a new, yet-to-be-decided ticker symbol.

"Core Natural Resources will be a leading producer and exporter of high-quality, low-cost coals with offerings ranging from metallurgical to high-calorific-value thermal coals," the companies said in a press release. The new company would own "one of the largest, lowest-cost and highest-calorific-value thermal coal mining complexes in North America and one of the largest, lowest-cost and highest-quality metallurgical coal mine portfolios in the United States."

Most of CONSOL's operational assets are in Pennsylvania, where the company is at work on a series of improvement projects in the state's coal-heavy southwestern area. These include a recommencement of a longwall unit at the Enlow Fork Thermal Coal Mine in Claysville, which was shuttered in 2020; preliminary engineering on the unit's revival started in July. CONSOL also is in the process of relocating and rebuilding longwall equipment at its Harvey Coal Mine in Sycamore.

The Enlow Fork project is expected to double production at the mine from 3.5 million to 7 million tons per year, while the Harvey project will allow the mine to continue producing about 5.5 million tons per year. Subscribers to Industrial Info's Global Market Intelligence (GMI) Metals & Minerals Project Database can read detailed reports on the Enlow Fork and Harvey projects.

But CONSOL's most ambitious plan likely is years away from development: a power plant fired by waste coal and biomass, for which it still is evaluating potential sites. The project would produce electricity from 3 million tons of wet waste coal and wet biomass, utilizing pressurized fluidized bed combustion technology, which also is called "supercritical technology." In a presentation last year, CONSOL said the project would "serve as a model for cleaning up coal waste while generating low-emission power," delivering a "CO2-negative, cost-competitive power supply that is resilient, dispatchable and can be base-loaded to meet the needs of an evolving grid."

CONSOL said the project--which, if approved, likely would be built in southwestern Pennsylvania--is designed to sequester 2 million to 3 million tons per year of CO2 and feature a "zero liquid discharge" for wastewater. In March 2024, the company said a front-end engineering and design (FEED) study was underway. Subscribers can learn more from a detailed project report.

Arch, meanwhile, has been pursuing a proposed expansion of its West Elk Coal Mine in Somerset, Colorado, which would install three new slopes to help the 5.8 million-ton-per-year mine produce up to 10 million tons per year of coal and coal refuse, which is its maximum permitted capacity. Subscribers can learn more from a detailed project report.

Ever since natural gas cemented its position atop North America's power-generation market, mergers and acquisitions have been a common occurrence in the coal industry. Last November, Glencore plc (Baar, Switzerland) paid $6.9 billion to acquire a 77% stake in Teck Resources Limited's (Vancouver, British Columbia) Canadian coal assets. For more information, see November 15, 2023, article - Glencore Buys Canada's Teck, Boosts Role in Steel Industry.

Subscribers to Industrial Info's GMI Project and Plant databases can click here for a full list of detailed reports for projects mentioned in this article, and click here for a full list of related plant profiles.

Subscribers can click here for a full list of reports for active and planned projects across the U.S. from Arch and CONSOL.

Industrial Info Resources (IIR) is the leading provider of industrial market intelligence. Since 1983, IIR has provided comprehensive research, news and analysis on the industrial process, manufacturing and energy related industries. IIR's Global Market Intelligence (GMI) platform helps companies identify and pursue trends across multiple markets with access to real, qualified and validated plant and project opportunities. Across the world, IIR is tracking more than 200,000 current and future projects worth $17.8 trillion (USD).