TORONTO (miningweekly.com) – TSX Venture Exchange-listed Cobalt Coal Corp has inked a sales contract with Riverside Energy, a subsidiary of Alpha Natural Resources, which will buy metallurgical coal from Cobalt's Westchester mine in West Virginia.

The contract includes a fixed price for 8 000 t/m of coal from Westchester over a period of twelve months, Calgary, Alberta-based Cobalt said.

Any production above this amount will be sold into the spot market.

"This is a pivotal event for our company as our Westchester coal mine can now be returned to operational status,” said Cobalt CEO David Lewis.

“The completion of this sales contract is very important as it has allowed us to hedge the bulk of our production in 2010, while still permitting acceptable exposure of the corporation to what is a rapidly strengthening spot market for metallurgical coal."

The Westchester mine produced high-grade metallurgical coal from the fourth quarter of 2008 until April last year, when it was temporarily suspended because of difficult market conditions.

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