The Uinta Basin's production sank by 11.5% from the first to the second quarter of the year, though the Western region's coal production was largely stable from the year-ago period, declining just 1.2%.
The basin, which spans portions of Utah and Colorado, produced about 6.6 million tons of coal during the second quarter, down from the 7.4 million during the first three months of 2019 and nearly 6.7 million tons produced during the second quarter of 2018.
While the top three mines in the region posted year-over-year double-digit increases in output, Peabody Energy Corp.'s Foidel Creek mine, the basin's fourth-largest operation saw substantial drops in coal production from the first quarter and year-ago periods, according to data compiled by S&P Global Market Intelligence. The Foidel Creek facility, also known as the Twentymile mine, produced 775,000 tons during the second quarter, a 25.2% drop from the same period of 2018 and 21.7% decline from the first three months of the year.
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Arch Coal Inc.'s West Elk mine in Colorado posted even greater year-over-year and quarter-over-quarter production declines. The operation produced 485,000 tons of coal during the recent period, a 53% slump from the year-ago period and about half of its first-quarter output.
Arch President and COO Paul Lang said on an earnings call in July that the company has been aggressive in taking out hedges for its western operations.
"So we're in relatively good standing as far as West Elk going into 2020," he said. "And I think the way West Elk's always going to run, as we watch the Newcastle market, we'll enter in and come out of it. We're not going to try and judge the market at the top. We're just going to layer it in and be careful how we do it."
Both the Foidel Creek and West Elk operations may soon work together if Peabody and Arch win regulatory approval for their pending joint venture. The two companies proposed a plan in June to combine their Powder River Basin and Colorado assets to unlock synergies with a pretax net present value of about $820 million.
The companies wrote in a June 19 release that the West Elk mine had about 54 million tons of proven and probable reserves as of Dec. 31, 2018, and the Foidel Creek mine had about 28 million.
"Arch is contributing its low-cost, higher-margin West Elk Mine that enhances Peabody's Twentymile Mine in Colorado," the release stated. "... The inclusion of the Colorado assets will lead to additional synergies and offer the ability to better serve domestic customers while preserving seaborne coal optionality."

Peabody President and CEO Glenn Kellow called the joint venture "an extraordinary combination of assets" to merge between the two companies.
"But this type of methodology, as you can imagine, is not uncommon outside of the United States," he said on a July earnings call. "... So it's not unusual in that sense and really is a template that we thought was appropriate in bringing out or bringing together this unique set of assets in a unique combination that will enable that competitiveness against natural gas and renewables."

