Patriot Coal Corporation was a

coal-mining Coal mining is the process of extracting coal from the ground. Coal is valued for its energy content and since the 1880s has been widely used to generate electricity. Steel and cement industries use coal as a fuel for extraction of iron from ...

company based in

St. Louis St. Louis () is the second-largest city in Missouri, United States. It sits near the confluence of the Mississippi and the Missouri Rivers. In 2020, the city proper had a population of 301,578, while the bi-state metropolitan area, which e ...

Missouri Missouri is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. Ranking List of U.S. states and territories by area, 21st in land area, it is bordered by eight states (tied for the most with Tennessee ...

in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

. The company is a spin-off of most of the Eastern U.S. operations of

Peabody Energy Peabody Energy is a coal mining and energy company headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri. Its primary business consists of the mining, sale, and distribution of coal, which is purchased for use in electricity generation and steelmaking. Peabody ...

. Patriot is the second largest coal miner east of the

Mississippi River The Mississippi River is the second-longest river and chief river of the second-largest drainage system in North America, second only to the Hudson Bay drainage system. From its traditional source of Lake Itasca in northern Minnesota, it f ...

. The company's operations are made up of 16 mining complexes. Thirteen of these complexes are located in

West Virginia West Virginia is a state in the Appalachian, Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern regions of the United States.The Census Bureau and the Association of American Geographers classify West Virginia as part of the Southern United States while the Bur ...

and three are located in

Kentucky Kentucky ( , ), officially the Commonwealth of Kentucky, is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States and one of the states of the Upper South. It borders Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio to the north; West Virginia and Virginia to ...

. In 2007, Patriot sold 22.1 million tons of

coal Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock, formed as rock strata called coal seams. Coal is mostly carbon with variable amounts of other elements, chiefly hydrogen, sulfur, oxygen, and nitrogen. Coal is formed when dea ...

. The company controls 1.9 billion tons of proven and probable coal reserves. Patriot is the largest producer of

thermal coal Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock, formed as rock strata called coal seams. Coal is mostly carbon with variable amounts of other elements, chiefly hydrogen, sulfur, oxygen, and nitrogen. Coal is formed when de ...

in the Eastern United States. It is also a leading producer of

metallurgical coal Metallurgical coal or coking coal is a grade of coal that can be used to produce good-quality coke. Coke is an essential fuel and reactant in the blast furnace process for primary steelmaking. The demand for metallurgical coal is highly coupled ...

. Approximately 80% of its coal is sold to domestic utilities and 20% is sold to domestic and international steel producers. Patriot Coal's stock started trading on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol PCX on November 1, 2007. On July 23, 2008, Patriot acquired Magnum Coal Company. At the time, Magnum was one of the largest coal producers in Appalachia, with 11 mines and 7 processing plants. Magnum had over 600 million tons of proven or probable coal reserves. On June 1 and 14, 2012, solely for the purpose of establishing venue in the Southern District of New York, Patriot incorporated two subsidiaries in New York, according to counsel for the

United Mine Workers The United Mine Workers of America (UMW or UMWA) is a North American labor union best known for representing coal miners. Today, the Union also represents health care workers, truck drivers, manufacturing workers and public employees in the Unit ...

. On July 9, 2012, Patriot Coal Corporation and all of but two of its wholly owned subsidiaries filed voluntary petitions for reorganization under Chapter 11 of the Bankruptcy Code in the Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York. None of its joint ventures are party to the bankruptcy proceeding, however. Patriot management advised its shareholders that it intends to use the reorganization process to address its financial challenges and make the company stronger and more competitive. The stock listed on the NYSE (New York Stock Exchange) under the symbol PCX dropped 72.1% to a record low on July 9, 2012. Also on July 9, 2012, the company issued a letter to all retired workers that their medical programs are still in place and payments will be made as usual. The company has, however, made it clear that it intends to seek to reduce or eliminate its benefit obligations through the bankruptcy process, which it estimates to have a total present value of $1.3 Billion. The

United Mine Workers of America The United Mine Workers of America (UMW or UMWA) is a North American Labor history of the United States, labor union best known for representing coal miners. Today, the Union also represents health care workers, truck drivers, manufacturing worke ...

, which represents Patriot's classified workers and retirees, has indicated that it will fight to preserve those promised benefits. On July 10, 2012, the company received interim bankruptcy court approval of a debtor-in-possession loan facility, giving Patriot access to $677 million in financing. Having restructured, the company exited

Chapter 11 Chapter 11 of the United States Bankruptcy Code (Title 11 of the United States Code) permits reorganization under the bankruptcy laws of the United States. Such reorganization, known as Chapter 11 bankruptcy, is available to every business, wheth ...

on December 18, 2013, as a privately owned company. In Patriot Coal's Brody Mine No. 1 in West Virginia two of its workers died in a ground failure. The owners were in the process of disputing numerous safety violations at the mine which the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration had categorized as a pattern violator. in February 2014, over 100,000 gallons of

coal slurry Coal slurry is a mixture of solids (mined coal or coal waste) and liquids (water or organic) produced by a coal preparation plant. Preparation To transform the coal ash into a slurry, coal is separated from non-combustible components and can be ...

spilled from a Patriot Coal facility into Fields Creek, a tributary of the

Kanawha River The Kanawha River ( ) is a tributary of the Ohio River, approximately 97 mi (156 km) long, in the U.S. state of West Virginia. The largest inland waterway in West Virginia, its valley has been a significant industrial region of the stat ...

. On May 12, 2015, Patriot Coal Corporation and its wholly owned subsidiaries filed voluntary petitions for restructuring under Chapter 11. In October 2015, Lexington, KY-based Blackhawk Mining, LLC, purchased most of the assets of Patriot Coal out of bankruptcy. The value of the transaction was approximately $1 billion. The company has announced it will no longer provide health coverage to its retirees after 31 December 2016.

Operations

On November 15, 2012, the company signed an agreement with the

Sierra Club The Sierra Club is an environmental organization with chapters in all 50 United States, Washington D.C., and Puerto Rico. The club was founded on May 28, 1892, in San Francisco, California, by Scottish-American preservationist John Muir, who be ...

to end the practice of

mountaintop removal Mountaintop removal mining (MTR), also known as mountaintop mining (MTM), is a form of surface mining at the summit or summit ridge of a mountain. Coal seams are extracted from a mountain by removing the land, or overburden, above the seams. Thi ...

, a destructive forms of mining.

References

External links

{{authority control Coal companies of the United States Coal mining in Appalachia Mining in Kentucky Mining in West Virginia Mountaintop removal mining Companies based in St. Louis American companies established in 2007 Energy companies established in 2007 Non-renewable resource companies established in 2007 Companies that filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2015 2007 establishments in Missouri