Rio Tinto Energy America (RTEA) was a wholly owned American

subsidiary A subsidiary, subsidiary company, or daughter company is a company (law), company completely or partially owned or controlled by another company, called the parent company or holding company, which has legal and financial control over the subsidia ...

of the England and Australia-based mining giant, the

Rio Tinto Group Rio Tinto Group is a British-Australian multinational company that is the world's second largest metals and mining corporation (behind BHP). It was founded in 1873 when a group of investors purchased a mine complex on the Río Tinto, in Hu ...

, headquartered in Gillette, Wyoming, United States. The company, previously known as Kennecott Energy after another of Rio Tinto's American subsidiaries, was formed in 1993 when Rio Tinto purchased

NERCO NERCO was an American mining company headquartered in Portland, Oregon, with interests in coal, natural gas, and oil. The company also had significant operations in gold and silver mining, and manufacture of gallium arsenide wafers. NERCO was cre ...

and placed that company's Spring Creek coal mine and Antelope coal mine under the RTEA umbrella. Subsequent acquisitions included the Cordero Mining Company, the Colowyo Coal Company, and the

Jacobs Ranch Jacobs Ranch Mine is a large open-pit coal mine located 15 miles southeast of Wright, Wyoming in the coal-rich Powder River Basin. In 2007, the mine produced 38.1 million short tons of coal, making it the fourth-largest coal mine by production i ...

coal mine. RTEA operated four mines in

Wyoming Wyoming ( ) is a landlocked U.S. state, state in the Mountain states, Mountain West subregion of the Western United States, Western United States. It borders Montana to the north and northwest, South Dakota and Nebraska to the east, Idaho t ...

and

Montana Montana ( ) is a landlocked U.S. state, state in the Mountain states, Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It is bordered by Idaho to the west, North Dakota to the east, South Dakota to the southeast, Wyoming to the south, an ...

, supplying fuel for the generation of approximately 6% of the United States' electricity consumption. The RTEA mines were spun off to Cloud Peak Energy in 2010.

History

In November 2007, Rio Tinto Group announced that it would try to divest RTEA and its assets. As a first step in that effort, Rio Tinto agreed in March 2009 to sell the Jacobs Ranch coal mine to

Arch Coal Arch Resources, previously known as Arch Coal, was an American coal mining and processing company. The company mined, processed, and marketed bituminous and sub-bituminous coal with low sulfur content in the United States. Arch Resources was the ...

for a sum of $761 million. In December 2010, Rio Tinto announced that it had succeeded in "100 per cent divestment of its equity holdings in Cloud Peak Energy Inc. through a fully exercised over allotment in connection with a recently announced secondary offering." Cloud Peak Energy stated that the result of the divestment was that Cloud Peak Energy Resources LLC "is now a wholly owned subsidiary of Cloud Peak Energy Inc." Dow Jones reported that "Cloud Peak will use proceeds from the IPO nitial public offeringto buy 52 per cent of the Rio Tinto's assets it operates and Rio Tinto will own the rest." The write service also reported that early in November Standard & Poor's Ratings Services "assigned Cloud Peak a junk rating of BB minus, three steps below investment grade, citing its need for more reserves among potential risks."Kathy Shwiff
"Rio Tinto spin-off Cloud Peak Energy IPO prices below expectations"
''The Australian'', November 20, 2009.

References

External links

Rio Tinto Energy America
at

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Coal companies of the United States Rio Tinto (corporation) subsidiaries Companies based in Wyoming American subsidiaries of foreign companies Non-renewable resource companies established in 1993 {{US-energy-company-stub