Jacobs Ranch is a large open-pit

Open-pit mining

Open-pit mining or opencast mining refers to a method of extracting rock or minerals from the earth by their removal from an open pit or borrow....

 coal mine located 15 miles southwest of Wright, Wyoming

Wright, Wyoming

Wright is a town in Campbell County, Wyoming, United States. The population was 1,504 at the 2010 census.- History :Settlement began in the area near Wright in the 1970s, with the creation of the Black Thunder Coal Mine, the largest mine in the Powder River Basin and most productive mine in the...

 in the coal-rich Powder River Basin

Powder River Basin

The Powder River Basin is a geologic region in southeast Montana and northeast Wyoming, about east to west and north to south, known for its coal deposits. The region supplies about 40 percent of coal in the United States. It is both a topographic drainage and geologic structural basin...

. In 2007, the mine produced 38.1 million short ton

Short ton

The short ton is a unit of mass equal to . In the United States it is often called simply ton without distinguishing it from the metric ton or the long ton ; rather, the other two are specifically noted. There are, however, some U.S...

s of coal, making it the fourth-largest coal mine by production in the United States.

The mine is currently owned by Rio Tinto Energy America

Rio Tinto Energy America

Rio Tinto Energy America is a wholly owned American subsidiary of the England and Australia-based mining giant, the Rio Tinto Group, headquartered in Gillette, Wyoming...

, an American-based subsidiary of the international mining giant Rio Tinto Group

Rio Tinto Group

The Rio Tinto Group is a diversified, British-Australian, multinational mining and resources group with headquarters in London and Melbourne. The company was founded in 1873, when a multinational consortium of investors purchased a mine complex on the Rio Tinto river, in Huelva, Spain from the...

. In early 2009, Rio Tinto reached an agreement to sell the Jacobs Ranch mine to Arch Coal

Arch Coal

Arch Coal is an American coal mining and processing company. The company mines, processes, and markets bituminous and sub-bituminous coal with low sulfur content in the United States. Arch Coal is the second largest supplier of coal in the U.S. behind Peabody Energy. The company supplies 16% of...

for $761 million.