Labor Secretary Hilda Solis is shown during an August 2009 visit to Patriot Coal’s Federal No. 2 Mine, an operation that she and other regulators touted as a model mine that now faces a criminal investigation.

It’s been a while since we had any new information on the federal criminal investigation of safety practices at Patriot Coal’s Federal No. 2 Mine up in Monongalia County, W.Va.

Some news was expected new week, when a sentencing hearing was scheduled for former Federal No. 2 foreman John Renner, who has pleaded guilty to one count of making a false statement on a required MSHA safety report.

Remember that the Federal No. 2 probe focuses on allegations that mine officials covered up explosive levels of methane in the underground operation’s vast collection of mined out and sealed tunnels.  Regulators and safety advocates have been paying much closer attention to methane concentrations in sealed areas following the deaths in 2006 of 12 miners at the Sago Mine in Upshur County and five miners at the Darby Disaster in Kentucky in sealed-area explosion. Renner, whose job was exclusively to “fireboss” mine seals, pleaded guilty to falsely indicating in mine records that he conducted methane tests on a particular set of seals at Federal No. 2 on Jan. 24, 2010.

Yesterday, I was doing a quick check of the court file, in preparation for the scheduled sentencing on Tuesday, and I discovered the sentencing had been delayed again.

In a Dec. 7 motion, U.S. Attorney William J. Ihlenfeld II asked that U.S. District Judge Irene M. Keeley delay sentencing Renner until after April 1, 2011, saying:

In support of this motion, the United States asserts that the defendant is still cooperating in an ongoing investigation. The undersigned has discussed the need for a continuance with defendant’s counsel, who has no objection to this motion and agrees with the government’s request that the sentencing be rescheduled after April 1, 2011.

Keeley approved the request in an order last week.

Don’t forget that Renner has told state and federal investigators (subscription required) that he was told more than a year prior to the Jan. 24 incident he was charged with that he was instructed by mine management not to keep records of explosive methane levels found in sealed areas at Federal No. 2.

In its most recent report to shareholders, filed in mid-November, Patriot Coal had this to say about the Federal No. 2 investigation:

In late January 2010, the U.S. Attorney’s office and the State of West Virginia began investigations relating to one or more of our employees making inaccurate entries in official mine records at our Federal No. 2 mine. We continue to investigate this matter internally. We terminated one employee and two other employees resigned after being placed on administrative leave. The terminated employee subsequently admitted to falsifying inspection records and has been cooperating with the U.S. Attorney’s office. On April 21, 2010, we received a federal subpoena requesting methane detection systems equipment used at our Federal No. 2 mine since July 2008 and the results of tests performed on the equipment since that date. We have provided the equipment and information as required by the subpoena.

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 30, 2010 at 10:52 am and is filed under Mine Safety. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.