North Porcupine

North Porcupine is a proposed 6,300 acre coal lease of 721 million tons in the Powder River Basin near Wright, Wyoming, designed to increase the life of Peabody Energy's existing North Antelope Rochelle Mine. The federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is scheduled to hold an auction in June 2012 for the coal. The lease was drawn up by Peabody itself, in what is known as a “lease by application,” and Peabody will also offer its own price. The final bid was $1.10 per ton.

History
On September 29, 2006, BTU Western Resources, Inc. (BTU), a subsidiary of Peabody Energy, filed an application with the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) for federal coal leases in three maintenance tracts encompassing over 5,000 acres and nearly 600 million tons of coal. The tracts are located adjacent to the North Antelope Rochelle Mine in Campbell County, Wyoming. The mine is operated by Powder River Coal, a subsidiary of Peabody.

On October 12, 2007, BTU filed a request with the BLM to modify its application and increase the lease area and coal volume to approximately nearly 9,000 acres and 1.2 million tons of coal. BLM determined that the application would be processed as two separate leasing tracts: North Porcupine Lease and South Porcupine Lease.

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