Bowie Resource Partners (BRP) will own the Bowie and Canyon Fuel mines and will be based in Louisville, Kentucky, with a regional office in Grand Junction, Colorado. It will have an annual productive capacity of 15 million to 17 million tons of thermal coal and a workforce of 1,100. Trafigura AG will be the exclusive marketing agent for all of BRP’s production.

“From the beginning with Bowie, our goal has been to establish a core business rooted in the Western Bituminous Region and to grow organically as well as with specifically targeted synergistic acquisitions. We see this as an opportune time to position ourselves, with very selective mining and transportation assets, to be out in front of an anticipated renewed global interest in western U.S. coal,” said John J. Siegel, chairman, BRP. “The exemplary safety and productivity record of Canyon Fuel, the company’s long-term relationships with its cornerstone domestic customers, and the superior quality and geology of its reserves, in conjunction with our recent development of significant West Coast export throughput capacity, combine to make this an extraordinary acquisition for us.”

Canyon Fuel includes the Sufco and Skyline longwall mines and the Dugout Canyon continuous miner operation, all located in Utah. Arch will also transfer to BRP 105 million tons of bituminous coal reserves in Utah. BRP plans to expand that reserve base.

Bowie operates a 5 million ton per year longwall mine, located in Paonia, Colorado. It opened in 1998, and was purchased by a group headed by John Siegel and Steve M. Rickmeier in July 2009. More than half (60%) of Bowie’s production and remaining reserves are committed to the Tennessee Valley Authority under a long-term contract. Bowie has a 650-tph heavy-media wash plant, a 115-car unit train loadout, and produces “super-compliance” bituminous coal.