American Resources Corp., through its subsidiary Quest Energy and Deane Mining, recently commenced operations at its Razorblade surface mine located in Letcher County, Kentucky. This is American Resources’ fifth mine brought into production in the last two years since acquiring and restructuring an asset base.
Quest Energy is initially extracting coal from the Hazard No. 4 and Hazard No. 4 Rider coal seams, with additional future plans for mining the Amburgy, Whitesburg, Hazard No. 5, Taylor, and the Hamlin Nos. 5, 6, and 7 seams using a contour, auger and highwall mining plan. Quest Energy anticipates several years of coal production from the Razorblade Surface mine.
All the mine’s production will be trucked across the street to the company’s 800-ton-per-hour Mill Creek preparation plant and/or its batch weight RapidLoader loadout.
Once fully ramped, American Resources expects Razorblade to contribute as much as 26,000 clean tons per month of high-grade PCI and thermal coal and enable them to expand coal sales to meet customers’ demands since restarting their Access Energy mine at Deane Mining this past September.
Razorblade is the first in a series of surface mines to be put into production organically, along with its recent acquisitions of the Wayland Surface mine and PointRock mine, throughout American Resources’ footprint within Floyd, Knott, Letcher, and Pike counties in Kentucky.
“We are very excited about expanding our production at Deane Mining to help meet the domestic and global demand for high-quality coals,” said Thomas Sauve, president of American Resources. “Furthermore, developing our surface mining assets, such as Razorblade, with very low transportation and operating costs, will allow us to maintain our very competitive cost position in the marketplace while enhancing our per-ton profit margin for our shareholders.”
American Resources continues to focus on its growth objective by leveraging its 35 controlled mining permits while also looking for supplemental acquisitions. The company has several low-cost surface mines in its portfolio.
