United Coal Company

United Coal Company (UCC) is a nonunion coal mining company headquartered in Teays Valley, West Virginia. It is a leading producer of high grade metallurgical coals, with underground, surface, and highwall operations in Virginia, West Virginia, and Kentucky, and is a subsidiary of the United Management Company, headquartered at Bristol, Virginia. The UCC produces high, medium, and low volatile coking coals, serving coking coal customers both domestically and worldwide. By 2007 UCC was producing at a rate of 7.5 million tons of coal a year – 80 percent metallurgical and 20 percent steam.

In May 2009 Ukrainian business group SCM Holdings/Metinvest purchased the company for an estimated $1 billion. Metinvest is an international, vertically integrated mining and steel group of companies, comprising 23 industrial companies leading the mining and steel industry of Ukraine and the Commonwealth of Independent States. Metinvest is owned by Rinat Akhmetov, a coal baron who is ranked by Forbes as having a personal fortune of $5.2 billion made from his steel and coal interests.

Outside Investors
United in 2006 allowed former King Pharmaceuticals executives John M. Gregory and Joseph "Joe" Gregory of Bristol, Tennessee and of SJ Investments, and Gregory Energy Partners, to invest in the company. The Gregory brothers are its first investors outside the McGlothlin family.

Founder, James W. "Jim" McGlothlin
In 1970, Jim McGolthin (a legal resident of Austin, Texas), along with his father Woodrow W. McGlothlin (who started the Diamond Smokeless Coal Co. in the mid-1950s) and five other investors, founded the United Coal Company in Grundy, Virginia. McGlothlin first sold UCC in 1997 and later repurchased the company in 2004. The McGlothlins also founded The McGlothlin Foundation, which funds a variety of education-related causes in Southwest Virginia.

The 2006 "McGlothlin Energy Policy"
While speaking at the industry-sponsored 2006 Virginia Coal Conference held at the Meadowview Convention Center in Kingsport, Tennessee, McGlothlin described the United States energy policy as being "America's Achilles heel" and compromising national economic independence due to both losing manufacturing jobs to relaxed labor, environmental, and saftety costs in China and to America being energy dependent upon Islamic nations "with the most extreme and hostile people on earth."

McGlothlin laid out the following framework of his self-described "McGlothlin Energy Policy" during the 2006 Virginia Coal Conference:
 * implementing a nationwide blue law prohibiting work on Sundays except for truly vital businesses and industry;
 * imposing an additional federal gas tax of $1 more per gallon on fuel sold on Sundays and Mondays to curb "weekend driving larks";
 * requiring every vehicle to get at least 30 miles per gallon within five years;
 * expanding the federal government by creating a U.S. Office of Nuclear Power Production ;
 * expediting the construction of new nuclear power plants across the United States;
 * preserving natural gas reserves "for the long haul" and;
 * banning the use of natural gas for power production in the United States;
 * federal subsidizing coal-to-liquid fuel plants [through government loans and tax assistance];
 * passing federal legislation guaranteeing a minimum floor price $55 per barrel for coal-to-liquid fuels, and;
 * placing tariffs on stocks of imported crude oil arriving in the United States.

United Management Company
UCC's parent company United Management Company, LLC is invested in oil, gas, power generation, industrial parts distribution, and finance, and maintains the publicly traded UC Investment Fund (UCIFX).

United Coal holdings

 * Carter Roag Coal Company
 * Sapphire Coal Company
 * Pocahontas Coal Company
 * Wellmore Coal Company

United Coal Mines

 * Buck Creek 1 Mine
 * Josephine 3 Mine
 * Pleasant Hill Mine
 * Sandlick II Mine
 * UZ Mine

Related SourceWatch Articles

 * Coal barons
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 * Virginia and coal
 * Kentucky and coal
 * United States and coal
 * Global warming