COVID-19

Consol restarts Bailey but idles Enlow Fork

US coal producer Consol Energy, which on March 30 announced it would temporarily curtail production at its Bailey mine in southwestern Pennsylvania, has reopened the mine while idling sister mine Enlow Fork.

 Consol Energy primarily mines coal from the prolific Pittsburgh 8 seam

Consol Energy primarily mines coal from the prolific Pittsburgh 8 seam

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Officials said the workforce at Bailey, located in Greene County, returned to a normal production schedule as of April 13. With that return has come a group of enhanced safety measures including sanitisation, social distancing, staggered and shifts.

Enlow Fork, meanwhile, has been temporarily idled in Greene and Washington counties due to an economic slowdown tied to COVID-19 as well as weak coal demand.

Consol did not indicate when the longwall mine could reopen, but confirmed it would be monitoring the situation and evaluating its options.

"As always, we intend to run our operations safely and compliantly, with our production based on market conditions and customer inventories," it said.

Bailey and Enlow Fork make up two-thirds of Consol's Pennsylvania Mining Complex.

Together, the three longwall mines (Harvey being the third) produce about 28.5 million tons (25.8 million tonnes) of high-Btu bituminous thermal and crossover metallurgical coal annually. The mines employ about 1,500 people combined, about 550 of which work at Enlow Fork.

 

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