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By Steve Block, Staff writer, TTi
• March 16, 2012
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Cline Mining Corporation’s planned increase in production would add 150 employees at New Elk Coal Mine west of Trinidad. The company, which has taken over day-to-day operations at the mine, already has hired about 60 first-line management employees from TK Mining, which will continue to supply labor at the site.
Dennis Mraz, executive vice-president and chief operating officer with Cline Mining, said in a recent phone interview that the mine has cleared all its regulatory hurdles after some delays.
If the increased production happens as planned, New Elk would employs about 500.
The mine produces high-quality metallurgical, or coking, coal that is shipped overseas for steel production. Mraz said the future of the mining operation looks very good.
“We want to make the point that we’re here to stay,” Mraz said. We have found more coal than we expected and it’s of a higher quality than we first thought. We hope to get to the point where we’re shipping three million tons per year.”
New Elk Mine was formed from a combination the existing Blue and Allen mines. Mraz said plans call for another mining unit to be added on the company’s property in the near future. Cline will continue to develop the existing mines.
The company is also in negotiations with Burlington Northern & Santa Fe Railroad to use an existing railroad bed to haul the coal from the mine to Jansen, just northwest of Trinidad. Currently the coal is hauled by truck to the railroad at Jansen. Most of the coal is then shipped by rail to Corpus Christi, Texas, and then overseas by freighter.
Toronto-based Cline owns 100 percent of New Elk, which has a measured and indicated metallurgical coal resource of 388.5 million tons, according to a technical report available at ClineMining.com. The resource estimate comes from an analysis of four coal seams: Blue, Maxwell, Apache and Allen. These seams are parallel in sequence and are all included in the mine plan. In addition to the coal resource, the coal mine assets include a three million ton per year clean coal preparation plant, product coal silos, buildings, surface real estate, conveyor systems, electrics, underground workings with mine portal access from the plant site and a permitted coal refuse disposal site, according to the website.
TK Mining is based in Delta with offices there and in Trinidad. Cline Mining Corp. has coal mining operations at three locations in British Columbia, Canada, a gold mining operation in Ontario, Canada, and an iron ore mining operation in Madagascar.
The New Elk Mine was originally opened in 1951 by the CF&I Steel Company to provide metallurgical coking coal for its blast furnace iron and steel production at Pueblo. The CF&I plant was converted to electrolytic reduction of steel in 1981, eliminating its need for coking coal and the mine was sold to Wyoming Fuels which operated the mine until 1989. The coal preparation plant, which was built in 1984 to improve product coal specification, continued operating with coal from other nearby mines until 1996.
The New Elk Mine began producing in December 2010 and will continue to increase up to 2.75 million tons of saleable metallurgical coal produced in 2012, with 3 million tons in 2013 and the years following, according to the website. The quality of the coal found in the seams is described as low-sulphur, medium to high fluidity, high volatile B bituminous metallurgical coking coals. Seam qualities are generally consistent and are not expected to require mine site blending for the coking market, according to the website.
Mraz said Cline Mining has been very pleased with the quality of its workforce so far.
“We’ve been able to attract some highly qualified people through TK Mining,” he said. “We’ve been more than happy with our workforce.”