Eagle Butte Mine

The Eagle Butte mine is a coal mine located 7 miles (11 km) north of Gillette, Wyoming in the United States in the coal-rich Powder River Basin. The mine is an open pit, "truck and shovel", mine producing a low-sulfur, sub-bituminous coal from the Roland and Smith seams that is used for domestic energy generation. Coal produced by the mine is shipped to its customers via railroad. The mine is owned and operated by Eagle Specialty Materials LLC after being acquired from Blackjewel LLC in 2019. As of 2009, Eagle Butte had reserves of 471,000,000 short tons (427,000,000 t) of sub-bituminous coal and a maximum permitted production capacity of 35,000,000 short tons (32,000,000 t) per year. Typical annual production has been in 20-25 million ton range for the last several years though. The average quality of the coal shipped from Eagle Butte is 8,400 BTU/lb, 0.34% Sulfur, 4.50% Ash, and 1.90% Sodium (of the ash). Train loading operations at the mine are done with a batch weigh bin system that is coupled to a "weigh-in-motion" track scale system. Silo capacity at the mine's rail loop, which can accommodate up to 5 unit trains, is 48,000 tons. In 2008, the mine produced just over 20,500,000 short tons (18,600,000 t) of coal, making it the 9th-largest producer of coal in the United States. In 2022, this had dropped to just over 15 million short tons of coal. However, this still made it the 5th-largest coal mine in the US.