Andalex West Ridge

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This page was last updated on February 7, 2025.

Overview

Andalex Resources was a privately-held company that first came to Utah in 1978 with the purchase of the Pinnacle mine in Carbon County, about 8-1/4 miles north east of Price in Deadman Canyon.

Andalex Resources was sold to Murray Energy in 2006. In the time between 1978 and 2006 Andalex purchased full or part-control of the Pinnacle mine in Deadmand Canyon, along with the Wildcat loadout and the Genwal mine in Crandall Canyon.

(Read more about Andalex Resources)

West Ridge Mine (1999-2007)

(Unless noted, the following is summarized from documents on file at the Utah Division of Oil, Gas and Mining, Permit C0070041)

The West Ridge Project consists of the West Ridge Mine in C Canyon in the Book Cliffs coal region in central Utah near East Carbon City and Sunnyside.

The West Ridge project is owned on a 50/50 basis by Intermountain Power Agency and Andalex Resources, Inc. It was being developed and was to be operated by West Ridge Resources, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Andalex.

The West Ridge name comes from the prominent ridge overlying the entire area between Whitmore Canyon (Sunnyside), and the A, B and C canyons to the northwest.

The West Ridge property was previously owned by U.S. Steel and then by Sohio (BP America) and was historically called the B Canyon property. Test entries were driven from outcrops in C Canyon by Kaiser Steel in the late 1950s from their adjacent mine works in B Canyon, and C Canyon (the next canyon to the northwest) was found to be the most suitable portal site. Kaiser had purchased the Sohio leases in 1986 after Sohio's GNC Energy Corp. dropped it tar sands project in 1985.

(The Sohio lease, in the name of Standard Oil of Ohio, was on federal lands, and on state school trust lands. Sohio had taken the leases for its Grand National Corporation, changed to GNC Energy Corp. in June 1981, to develop the tar sands deposit, as part of the tar sands and shale oil boom of the early 1980s. Work was to start in 1982 with plans to start petroleum production at 10,000 barrels per day and increase it to 100,000 barrels per day within three years. The Sunnyside deposit was an extension of similar deposits on Asphalt Ridge in the southeast part of the Uinta Basin. The Sunnyside tar sands were reported as containing about 5 million barrels of oil, the equivalent of the North Slope deposits in Alaska. The Sunnyside tar sands project was in partnership with Stancal Energy, a subsidiary of Chevron, or Standard Oil of California. Chevron pulled out of the project in May 1984. The numerous tar sands projects ended in late 1985 and early 1986 when the U. S. Congress failed to provide the needed funds and grants to the quasi-government Synthetic Fuels Corporation, that would have allowed more research and pilot plants.) (Read more about the oil sand "rock asphalt" deposit near Sunnyside)

West Ridge mine surface facilities are located in C Canyon, where the left and right forks converge. The total surface facility area occupies about 25 acres. This area had been previously disturbed by mine related activities by the test entries made by Kaiser. The West Ridge reserves are located immediately northwest of the historic Kaiser Sunnyside Mines.

The surface facilities are situated in C Canyon, north of the old underground mine workings in the Sunnyside No.1 Mine. The area being mined is located northwest of the old Sunnyside No.1 underground mine workings. The lease was, at one time, held by U.S. Steel Corp., who authorized Kaiser Coal Company to extend a set of underground test entries from the Sunnyside No.1 mine part way through the lease.

West Ridge is a longwall mining operation with full production planned for the year 2001 at the rate of 3.5 million tons per year. The mine is expected to produce about 42 million tons of coal from the existing leases. The existing mine plan assumes that mining in the area northeast of Whitmore Canyon will be limited by heavy cover (3000 feet or more).

The mine consists of one longwall section and two continuous miner sections. Both longwall and continuous miner methods are employed to recover the coal resource. Longwall are the primary production method, while continuous miners are used mainly for mine development to support the longwall method. The longwall panels are laid out to maximize recovery of the primary coal reserves. Continuous miners are utilized to develop main entries, longwall gate entries, sumps and other similar development areas.

January 26, 1998
Andalex Resources, Tower Division, formally applied to the Utah Division of Oil Gas and Mining for a permit to mine the coal in what would be known as the West Ridge mine, to be operated by a new Andalex subsidiary, West Ridge Resources. The federal coal lease had been held since April 24, 1997 by Amca Coal Leasing, as a subsidiary of Andalex Resources. Amca Coal Leasing had held the lease since it was assigned to them by Standard Oil Company on March 27, 1997. Standard Oil had held the coal lease since June 1, 1951.

April 1999
Andalex began active construction of the surface facilities at the West Ridge mine, prior to active development. A paved road to the mine from State Route 123 about 5 miles east of East Carbon City was completed in December 1999. The permit approval process for the West Ridge coal mine began in January 1998, following the acquisition of an underground mining lease from Standard Oil company in March 1997.

January 2001
Active development work began in January 2000, developing the needed mine portals, opening haulage tunnels and airways, and setting up the longwall machine, production mining began at the West Ridge mine in January 2001. Mining was by longwall machine, with longwall mining projected to end in late 2015, and pillar mining projected to end in mid 2019.

June 1, 2001
Andalex Resources and Intermountain Power Agency took joint 50/50 ownership of the coal lease for the West Ridge mine.

Coal from the West Ridge mine was trucked to the C. V. Spur (later Savage Coal Terminal) on the former D&RGW south of Price, or to the Wildcat loadout on Utah Railway.

By 2004, coal production at the West Ridge had not yet started due to permitting delays caused by an environmental review. (Sun Advocate, March 16, 2004)

August 9, 2006
UtahAmerican Energy, Inc. acquired the Utah coal mines owned by Andalex Resources, including the Crandall Canyon mines. UtahAmerican Energy continued mining operations at the Crandall Canyon site until August 2007, when an accident forced the closure of the Crandall Canyon No. 1 Mine. Since that time, the mine has been in "temporary cessation" status. The South Crandall Canyon mine was placed in "temporary cessation" status a month later. At the time operations ceased, the Crandall Canyon coal mine encompassed a total of 5,194 acres of federal and state coal leases.

UtahAmerican Energy was a subsidiary of Murray Energy. (Read more about Murray Energy and the coal mines it owned in Utah)

Murray Energy closed the West Ridge mine in December 2007 due to concerns of geologic stresses making the mine unsafe. The concerns were addressed and the long wall machine being used in the mine returned to production after better roof controls were put in place. The geologic problems continued and the mine was formally shut down in November 2012 and its 102 miners were laid off. (St. George Spectrum & Daily News, December 5, 2007; February 8, 2009; November 10, 2012)

Based on documents filed with the Utah Division of Oil Gas & Mining, the West Ridge mine is no longer active, with periods of document filing jumping from 1998 to 2007, then to 2018. The large portion of the coal leases held by the company were relinquished by 2023, with the company retaining the area surrounding the surface plant buildings.

October 16, 2020
Utah Land Resources -- Ownership of the West Ridge mine passed from UtahAmerican Energy Inc., a subsidiary of Murray Energy, to a new company, Utah Land Resources, a subsidiary of American Consolidated Natural Resources, the reorganized Murray Energy company which had declared bankruptcy in 2019. (Documents on file at the Utah Division of Oil Gas and Mining; the official date may be August 24, 2020, when the request was sent to DOGM)

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