Usibelli finds buyer for Wishbone coal

MAT-SU — Usibelli Coal Mine has announced it has a potential buyer for the coal it hopes to take out of Wishbone Hill in Sutton.

“We have identified a likely purchaser of the coal and that is J-Power,” company spokeswoman Lorali Carter said Wednesday afternoon.

J-Power runs power plants in Japan and has been a customer of Usibelli's Healy mine for years.

Usibelli has said that one of the main hurdles it needs to overcome before it can start taking coal out of the area is to find someone willing to buy it. Carter said she'd spent the first half of her week attending meetings between public officials and representatives of J-Power and Usibelli.

“We had the opportunity to introduce J-Power to different policy makers and officials and announce something that we consider to be a good milestone,” she said.

The Japanese company, she said, so far intends to buy all of the coal that Usibelli can dig out of Wishbone Hill.

The mining plan is not without its detractors. Any public meeting with the Wishbone Hill project on the agenda has drawn massive turnout from those opposed to it, many of whom live in the Buffalo Mine Road area near the proposed site. Those neighbors worry about coal dust, noise, and safety, among other issues.