This article originally provided by The Daily Mail

November 3, 2006

Coal waste recovery project under way in southern W.Va.

By VICKI SMITH
Associated Press Writer

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. (AP) -- A $13 million plant that recovers coal waste from a slurry pond at southern West Virginia's Pinnacle Mine has begun producing a valuable product that previously was discarded, the company behind the project says.

Beard Technologies Inc. believes that more than 5 million tons of sand-like "fine coal'' lies in the 150-foot deep, three-quarter-mile long slurry pond near Pineville in Wyoming County. About 45 percent of that can be recovered, said Herb Mee Jr., president of the parent corporation, The Beard Co.

Workers dredge the pond and dry the sediment, and Beard sells it back to PinnOak Resources LLC of Canonsburg, Pa., which owns the mine. PinnOak then mixes the sediment with coal from the mine and sells the coal to its customers , Mee said Thursday.

Beard, based in Oklahoma City, Okla., expects to sell at least 240,000 tons a year. Mee said it would take 12-15 years to recover all the coal. If the market for the product is strong, the work could be sped up to generate 350,000 tons a year, he said.

The Pinnacle Mine, a longwall operation, opened in 1969. It produces about 4 million tons of high-grade metallurgical coal a year from the Pocahontas No. 3 seam, most of which is under contract to companies such as Pittsburgh-based U.S. Steel Corp.

Pinnacle also produces coal bed methane for power generation in the northeastern United States.

In September, PinnOak announced it was laying off 110 workers at Pinnacle and the nearby Green Ridge mine. About 370 still work at those locations, the company said Thursday.

PinnOak spokeswoman Shellie Roth said the new project is an environmentally responsible practice that employs new technology to extend the life of the slurry pond and benefit PinnOak customers.

The recovery operation is still in the startup phase, but Mee said it has already met or exceeded expectations. Testing will continue another two weeks, but crews should hit full production by the end of the month, he said.

Beard currently employs 13 people at the site, but that will grow to about 25 when all three shifts are running.

"The project is capital-intensive more than labor-intensive,'' Mee said. "This is a state-of-the-art plant.''

The Beard Co. is a coal-reclamation company that is also involved in oil and gas production, and the construction and operation of fertilizer plants in China.