The company that purchased former coal producer Westmoreland Coal Co.'s Ohio assets during its bankruptcy process is seeking a federal lease on about 432 acres in Ohio containing an estimated 1.4 million tons of subsurface coal reserves, according to an Aug. 19 notice in the Federal Register.
CCU Coal and Construction LLC, a company owned by Charles Ungurean, the founder of Oxford Resource Partners LP, submitted a lease by application for the area, which includes seven tracts in Morgan and Perry counties.
The U.S. Bureau of Land Management is accepting bids on the tract until 10 a.m. ET on Sept. 25 in Washington, D.C., and will hold a lease sale at 1 p.m. ET that day, according to the notice. The successful lessee will pay the federal government an annual rental fee of $3 per acre, or a fraction thereof, and a 12.5% royalty on the value of the coal mined by surface methods and 8% on coal requiring underground mining.
