HISTORY OF DEVELOPMENT OF COAL AND COALBED METHANE RESOURCES OF THE RATON COALFIELD IN NEW MEXICO

The Upper Cretaceous and Paleocene coal-bearing sequences of the Raton and Vermejo Formations comprise the Raton coalfield in northeast New Mexico. These formations crop out on a highly dissected plateau encompassing the southern half of the Laramide Raton Basin. There is a long history of coal mining in this area beginning in the 1870s with a few mines supplying domestic fuel to nearby towns. By the 1880s, several mines were excavating coal seams exposed in the canyons walls along the edge of the coalfield. From the 1880s into the 1950s, Raton coalfield mines provided coal for the railroads and for copper and steel smelters in the Southwest. The change from coal to diesel-powered trains in the mid-1950s forced the closure of many mines. Kaiser Steel acquired most of the Raton coalfield area in 1955 to supply coal to their California steel operations. Kaiser began an exploration program resulting in the development of the York Canyon complex area, near the axis of the Raton Basin. Kaiser Steel sold its coal properties in 1989 to Pittsburg and Midway and Pennzoil. Pittsburg and Midway continued mining at the York Canyon complex supplying coal to power plants in Wisconsin. Pennzoil began exploration drilling to evaluate the coalbed methane potential in the Vermejo Park area. The lack of a pipeline into the area and low natural gas prices during early 1990s led Pennzoil to abandon their coalbed methane play. By 1999, construction of a pipeline extension into New Mexico from Colorado made development of this area economically viable. El Paso Raton LLC acquired Pennzoil’s former holdings and began coalbed methane development in 1999. As coalbed methane plays were expanding, the mining operations were diminishing in the Raton field with the last mine in the New Mexico closing in 2002 because of poor economics. The recent coalbed methane drilling of over 300 wells in the Raton coalfield created a publicly available well dataset for an area previously lacking such information. A new database and geographic information system using data from these new wells, coal mines data, and other published data yields better resolution of basin structure, coal thickness and extent of the coal and coalbed methane resources and related geology of the southern Raton Basin.