June 27, 2025 - A Beckley based coal company this week became the second in West Virginia in recent days to announce a large layoff of miners. Civil LLC announced it will layoff 279 employees at nine mining sites across southern West Virginia.

Loot Press was the first to report on the layoffs which look to be permanent. The biggest hit will be to the company’s CV 2 mine in Fayette County where 135 miners will lose their jobs along with 20 more at the operation’s nearby prep plant. The company also announced it will eliminate 44 positions at its Delbarton Prep Plant in Mingo County and 33 jobs at the Eagle Energy Mine in Kimberly. Smaller cuts are coming for other operations across Mingo, Logan, Fayette, and Boone County.

The layoff announcement came on the heels of an announcement by Core Natural Resources of plans to layoff 200 workers at the Itman Mine in Wyoming County.

Ben Beakes, President of the Metallurgical Coal Producers Association of West Virginia, said although neither of those companies are members of his organization, it’s not a big surprise because of the current economic climate of coal.

“Inflation continued to rise after Covid and the cost of mining has gone up astronomically. The break-even point as far as the cost for producing a ton of coal has significantly increased,” Beakes told MetroNews.

Beakes’ assessment is echoed by operators at other companies. Andy Eidson, CEO of Alpha Metallurgical Resources suggested as much in his annual remarks to shareholders when commenting on the company’s first quarter revenues.

“Alpha’s first quarter results reflect the challenging market environment we continue to experience, as well as significant impacts we previously disclosed related to severe weather conditions in January and February. These adverse weather events put pressure on our volumes and resulted in cost increases for the quarter. In light of the poor market conditions and economic uncertainty caused by shifting tariff and trade policies, we continue to prioritize the protection of our liquidity position,” is how Eidson was quoted in a press release about the First Quarter earnings.

The lower than expected earnings haved caused the company to lower its anticipate revenues for the coming year.

“Right now the prices are just either at or below a break-even point for certain coal mines, so that’s probably why we’re seeing some of these announcements at this point,” said Beakes.

“Most of the earnings calls from publicly traded coal companies have acknowledged we are experiencing a decrease in demand for our product. This literally is just a supply/demand issue and we hope the second half of this year we’re going to see better results,” he added.