PHILIPPI — Officials say the Leer South Mine, which was closed after an underground fire in January, is on schedule to reopen this year.

The quarterly report for Core Natural Resources, the company that owns the mine, provides an update on the Leer South facility.

“On Jan. 15, 2025, Core announced that it was sealing Leer South’s active longwall panel to extinguish isolated combustion-related activity there,” the report states. “Since that time, the Leer South team — in close collaboration with federal and state regulators — has safely re-entered the mine and resumed development work with continuous miner units.

“Additionally, the team has assessed – via the deployment of infrared cameras and other monitoring activities – that the mine’s longwall equipment was largely unaffected by the event.”

“On behalf of the board and the entire senior management team, I want to again commend the operations team as well as federal and state regulators for their exceptional work in managing this situation in a safe and efficient manner,” Paul A. Lang, Core’s chief executive officer, said in the report. “The team’s great efforts have placed us well on track to resume longwall production mid-year, in keeping with our originally indicated timeline.”

According to the report, Core’s total expenditure from the Leer Mine fire is about $30 million.

The mine was evacuated early Jan. 13 and mining operations were suspended throughout the day while the cause of the blaze was investigated. No one was injured during the fire, which started in the long mine section and spread to the “gob” area of the complex.The “gob” refers to the space that is left in the mine after coal has been extracted. The area is typically filled with a mixture of coal, clay, rock and other materials. The fire began at 1 a.m.

The next day, Jan. 14, it was announced that Arch Resources, the coal company that owned the Leer South mine, had merged with CONSOL Energy to form a new company, Core.

Later in January, it was announced that the mine would remain temporarily sealed “in order to extinguish isolated combustion-related activity there.”

A public informational meeting that was scheduled in Barbour County earlier this month, which was to feature Larry Gore, general manager of the Leer South Mine, was canceled.

The Feb. 10 event was to have been part of the Barbour County Chamber of Commerce’s Information: Barbour County series.

Officials said Gore “had to cancel due to unforeseen problems.”