The Dry Fork mine is a coal mine located 8 miles north of Gillette

Gillette, Wyoming

Gillette is a city in and the county seat of Campbell County, Wyoming, United States. The population was 29,087 in 2010. Gillette is a city centrally located in an area involved with the development of vast quantities of American coal, oil, and coal bed methane gas...

, Wyoming

Wyoming

Wyoming is a state in the mountain region of the Western United States. The western two thirds of the state is covered mostly with the mountain ranges and rangelands in the foothills of the Eastern Rocky Mountains, while the eastern third of the state is high elevation prairie known as the High...

 in the United States 44°22′59"N 105°27′19"W in the coal-rich Powder River Basin

Powder River Basin

The Powder River Basin is a geologic region in southeast Montana and northeast Wyoming, about east to west and north to south, known for its coal deposits. The region supplies about 40 percent of coal in the United States. It is both a topographic drainage and geologic structural basin...

. The mine is an open pit

Open-pit mining

Open-pit mining or opencast mining refers to a method of extracting rock or minerals from the earth by their removal from an open pit or borrow....

 mine that utilizes truck and shovel mining method to mine a low-sulfur, sub-bituminous coal that is used for domestic energy generation and shipped to customers via railroad. In 2011, the mine is expected to begin supplying coal to the newly constructed Dry Fork power station that has been constructed adjacent to the mine. The mine is currently owned and operated by Western Fuels Association

Western Fuels Association

The Western Fuels Association is a not-for profit cooperative that supplies coal and transportation services to consumer-owned electric utility in the Great Plains, Rocky Mountain and Southwest regions...

.

As of 2009, Dry Fork had reserves of 330 mm tons of sub-bituminous coal and a maximum permitted production capacity of 15mm tons per year. Typical annual production has been in 5.2mm ton range for the last several years though. In 2008, the mine produced just over 5.2 million short ton

Short ton

The short ton is a unit of mass equal to . In the United States it is often called simply ton without distinguishing it from the metric ton or the long ton ; rather, the other two are specifically noted. There are, however, some U.S...

s of coal, making it the 37th-largest producer of coal in the United States.

The average quality of the coal shipped from Dry Fork is 8,050-8,200 BTU/lb, 0.20-0.42% Sulfur, 3.8-5.1% Ash, and 1.50% Sodium (of the ash). Train loading operations at the mine are done with a batch weigh bin system that is coupled to a "weigh-in-motion" track scale system. Silo capacity at the mine's rail loop, which can accommodate a single unit train, is 10,800 tons.

History

The Dry Fork mine shipped its first coal to members of the Western Fuels Association

Western Fuels Association

The Western Fuels Association is a not-for profit cooperative that supplies coal and transportation services to consumer-owned electric utility in the Great Plains, Rocky Mountain and Southwest regions...

in 1990 and is run by Western Fuels-Wyoming an associate of Western Fuels. Since opening, Dry Fork has shipped 69.5mm tons of coal.

Production

Year	Coal Production	Employees
2009	5,232,451	67
2008	5,261,242	71
2007	5,310,716	70
2006	5,860,998	69
2005	4,093,611	61
2004	4,533,621	61
2003	4,363,683	61
2002	4,891,403	65
2001	4,029,100	68
2000	2,268,720	34
1999	1,219,590	9
1998	1,030,718	9
1997	918,224	8
1996	2,945,662	39
1995	3,606,453	47
1994	3,836,228	51
1993	3,279,801	49
1992	3,453,340	49
1991	2,786,946	43
1990	736,641	32