The New Elk Mine is located in the Raton Basin, a crescent-shaped structural trough and depocenter that extends from Huerfano Park, Colorado, to Cimarron, New Mexico. The basin is bound on the west by the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, on the northeast by the Apishapa Arch, and on the southeast by the Sierra Grande and Las Animas Arches. The basin is approximately 80 miles in length and 50 miles wide, encompassing approximately 4,000 square miles and is asymmetric in shape with the axis running along the western margin. The basin is filled with approximately 20,000 to 25,000 feet of sedimentary rock in its deepest part.

The Raton Basin contains a large coal resource contained in Late Cretaceous and Paleocene formations. The coal is well known for its high-quality coking characteristics and CBM (coal bed methane).

The Raton Basin is an asymmetric synclinal basin formed during the Laramide Orogeny. The western flank of the basin dips steeply to the east and is displaced by transcurrent and thrust faults. Strata dip becomes milder in the central and eastern areas of the basin and within the permit area the dip ranges from 0 to 7 degrees and averages about 2.2 degrees east-northeast. The axis of thenorthwest-southeast oriented La Veta Syncline occurs just east of the property. The strata dip mildly westward into the basin on the basin’s eastern flank.

The coal seams of interest are hosted by the Upper Cretaceous-Tertiary Raton Formation, a heteroge ........

Coal production commenced in the Blue Seam at the Mine on 21 May 2021, with the first production unit. The Blue seam has 22Mt of saleable coal reserves at a coal seam cut-off height of four foot and the mine plan contemplates mining the entire Blue seam reserve with just two continuous miners over a period of 24 years.

Mining Method
Coal will be mined with continuous miners adopting the place change room and pillar method.

A super section involves two continuous miners operating on each section. This can be either with two continuous miners operating concurrently on a section or sequentially, that is, as one machine has completed a cut, the operator will ‘walk through’ to the other side of the section and commence a new cut with the second machine.

While the operator is making the new cut with the second machine, a crew-hand will reposition the first machine for its next cut. When the operator has completed the cut with the second machine, he or she will return to the first machine and execute another cut, and so the sequence continues without any, or limited, downtime in production during a shift.

Typically, two to three shuttle cars (coal haulers), convey coal from a continuous miner to a feeder breaker while the continuous miner is being operated. The feeder breaker sizes the coal and then feeds it on to a conveyor belt which then transfers the coal outside the mine to a stockpile before being fed into the CHPP. Once a cont ........

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