The company’s Ark Land subsidiary made a request this week to the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to rescind its proposal for the 6,000-acre West Jacobs Ranch lease in northeastern Wyoming.
Arch first acquired the federal lease request when it purchased Jacobs Ranch from Rio Tinto in 2009.
“The decision to withdraw the application was made after careful evaluation of our near-term needs and commitment to a prudent capital allocation strategy,” Arch spokeswoman Logan Bonacorsi said.
According to the Associated Press, the BLM currently lists just six pending lease applications in the Powder River Basin (PRB) that are under review; the most recent was entered in 2001, and nearly all have been delayed by market conditions.
