Blue Creek No. 1 Coal Mine

This article is part of the Global Coal Mine Tracker, a project of Global Energy Monitor.

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Blue Creek No. 1 Coal Mine is an operating coal mine in Kanawha, West Virginia, United States.

Location

Table 1: Project-level location details

Mine Name	Location	Coordinates (WGS 84)
Blue Creek No. 1 Coal Mine	Kanawha, West Virginia, United States	38.352572, -81.458882 (exact)

The map below shows the exact location of the coal mine:

Project Details

Table 2: Project status

Status	Status Detail	Opening Year	Closing Year
Operating	–	2009	–

Table 3: Operation details

Note: The asterisk (*) signifies that the value is a GEM estimated figure.

Capacity (Mtpa)	Production (Mtpa)	Year of Production	Mine Type	Mining Method	Mine Size (km2)	Mine Depth (m)	Workforce Size
–	0.7422240485	2025	Underground	Bord and Pillar	–	373*	117

Table 4: Coal resources and destination

Total Reserves (Mt)	Year of Total Reserves Recorded	Total Resources (Mt)	Coalfield	Coal Type	Coal Grade	Primary Consumer/ Destination
–	–	–	Appalachia	Bituminous	Thermal	–

Table 5: Ownership and parent company

Note: To access more comprehensive data on energy ownership, please visit the Global Energy Ownership Tracker.

Owner	Parent Company	Headquarters
Blue Creek Mining LLC [100.0%]	Sev.en Global Investments AS	Czech Republic

Table 6: Historical production (unit: million tonnes per annum)

ROM or Saleable	2017	2018	2019	2020	2021	2022	2023	2024	2025
ROM	–	–	–	–	–	0.9	1.3	–	0.74

Note: The above sections were automatically generated and are based on data from the Global Coal Mine Tracker August 2026 release.

Ownership Tree

This ownership tree is part of the Global Energy Ownership Tracker, a project of Global Energy Monitor.

Background

Blue Creek No. 1 UG Mine (MSHA ID: 4609297) is an underground mine in Kanawha, West Virginia. Blue Creek Mining operates the mine, which is a subsidiary of Blackhawk Mining LLC. Blackhawk Mining LLC was acquired by the Czech company Sev.en Energy in 2020. The mine has been in operation since 2009.

In July 2019, Blue Creek Mining was sued by a former employee who claimed that he was fired in retaliation because he reported health and safety concerns.

In 2020, the mine employed 109 workers and produced 0.95 million tons of coal.

Coal Mine Boundaries and Methane Sources

Global Energy Monitor researchers have identified coal mine boundary/boundaries and potential sources of coal mine methane (CMM) for this mine. These research results can be used to drive CMM attribution and mitigation efforts, particularly when combined with remotely sensed methane plume locations and mine ownership data. Explore the results with the embedded map at the top of this page by clicking on the mine boundary polygon or the CMM placemarkers to reveal more details. A detailed description of this research can be found in Coal Mine Boundaries and Methane Sources. This data is also available as a downloadable companion dataset to the Global Coal Mine Tracker and the Global Methane Emitters Tracker.

Table SMP1: Coal mine boundaries and methane sources data

ID	Mine feature category	Mine feature subcategory	Description	Coordinates precision	Data source date
M1599.B1	mine boundary	underground	Blue Creek No 1 coal mine detailed underground mining area boundary	extracted	Unclear - according to https://web.archive.org/web/2/https://www.wvgs.wvnet.edu/www/coal/cbmp/coalims.html, "Updates to the data set occur as new data becomes available."
M1599.P1	other	slope access or production shaft	coal mine production shaft	extracted	2024-03-18 00:00:00
M1599.P2	ventilation system	shaft	ventilation shaft	extracted	2024-03-18 00:00:00
M1599.P3	other	mine entrance or exit	possible mine entrance	extracted	2024-03-18 00:00:00
M1599.P4	other	mine entrance or exit	possible mine entrance	extracted	2024-03-18 00:00:00

Table SMP2: Coal mine boundaries and methane sources data (continued)

Coal mine boundaries and methane sources were last researched for this mine on Apr 10, 2025

ID	Notes
M1599.B1	The boundary is the complex underground mining area polygon extracted from the West Virginia Geological and Economic Survey (WVGES) resource at https://web.archive.org/web/2/https://atlas.wvgs.wvnet.edu/arcgis/rest/services/Coal_Web_Mercator/All_Mining_WM/MapServer. This resource was filtered for mine_name = BLUE CREEK NO. 1, and the resulting polygon was simplified using distance-based simplification with a tolerance of 25m. The mine mines the Stockton coal seam. The area of this boundary is 10 sq km. Important note: the following mine boundaries overlap the mine boundary and care should be taken when attempting methane source attribution: UNKNOWN (Number_5_Block seam), UNKNOWN (Number_5_Block seam), UNION CARBIDE NO 7A (Number_5_Block seam), AMHURST COAL CO. DANA SLOPE MINE (Number_5_Block seam), BLUE CREEK NO. 1 (Stockton seam), Unknown (Number_2_Gas seam)
M1599.P1	Identified visually from Google Earth Pro satellite imagery.
M1599.P2	Identified visually from Google Earth Pro satellite imagery.
M1599.P3	Identified visually from Google Earth Pro satellite imagery.
M1599.P4	Identified visually from Google Earth Pro satellite imagery.

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Additional data

To access additional data, including an interactive map of world coal mines, a downloadable dataset, and summary data, please visit the Global Coal Mine Tracker on the Global Energy Monitor website.