MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – Murray Energy’s Monongalia County Mine is quiet after company officials decided to idle operations while they try to move stockpiles of coal that is already on the surface.
Murray made the announcement in a short release on Tuesday that the mine would be shutdown because of what it called “shortfalls by railroads” that serve the mine.
“Certainly they (the miners) will be without a paycheck for a while,” said Mike Caputo, with the United Mine Workers of America.
About 500 UMWA miners work at the site in the western end of Monongalia County.
“Usually when this happens it means management sees that this is only going to be temporary and will call everybody back at same time to the operation and restart it in its entirety,” said Caputo.
Corporate leaders said operations won’t resume until coal inventory levels allow.
Murray said shipments would continue during the outage and production would resume when coal stockpiles were lowered to an acceptable level.
“Things have certainly slowed down. It’s no big secret. It’s a tough market out there,” commented Caputo. “It’s not what it once was.”
The mine was formerly the Blacksville Mine when it was owned by Consol Energy. Consol sold many of its mining operations to Murray in 2013.