US coal miners Peabody and Arch Coal on Wednesday announced that they would combine their Powder River Basin and Colorado assets in what they describe as a “highly synergistic” joint venture (JV) aimed at strengthening the competitiveness of coal against natural gas and renewables. The JV was expected to unlock synergies with a pretax net present value of about $820-million, the NYSE-listed miners said, stating that the average JV synergies were projected to be about $120-million a year over the initial ten years.
