VANCOUVER (miningweekly.com) – A delay by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) in evaluating the approval of the Bailey mine permit for the 4L panel has pressed Consol Energy to move the longwall to another panel to resume operations.

The company expects the longwall move to last about four weeks and is implementing several measures to mitigate the production impact from this delay, including working added unscheduled shifts at the remaining four longwalls, compared with the previous five-and-a-half-day schedule.

This operating schedule change will also allow the company to meet its customers' needs and to immediately recall some of the previously furloughed workers.

Mining at Bailey longwall was halted earlier this month following an August Environmental Hearing Board (EHB) decision rejecting a revised underground longwall mining permit issued by the state’s DEP in 2015, which allowed Consol subsidiary Consol Pennsylvania Coal Company to cause extensive damage to a stream named Polen Run, which flows into Ryerson Station State Park.

The EHB sided with two nongovernmental environment groups, the Centre for Coalfield Justice and the Sierra Club, in decreeing that Pennsylvania’s Clean Streams Law and Article I, Section 27 of the Pennsylvania Constitution does not allow the DEP to permit mining that is predicted to damage a stream so severely that the only way to “fix” the damage is to construct a new stream in its place.

Meanwhile, with Consol increasing the operating schedule to offset the production impact from the longwall move delay, the company reaffirmed its previously stated full-year guidance for the Pennsylvania Mining Complex at between 25.6-million and 27.6-million tons and total coal capital expenditures of $112-million to $120-million.

Consol also reaffirmed its previous attributable full-year adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation (Ebitda) of about $345-million, which is included in the expected 2017 total company adjusted Ebitda of $815-million.

The Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania-based company advised that this was the first time in the 35-year history of the Bailey mine that the company has failed to receive a needed mining permit in time. However, it added that it continues to work closely with the necessary agencies to obtain operating permits, which will enable the longwall mining operations to continue.

Consol’s Pennsylvania mining complex operates five longwalls with approved permits as far out as ten years in advance. The complex comprises the Bailey, Enlow Fork and Harvey mines, and a central preparation plant.