"Outstanding results at Farmersburg and Gateway helped Peabody achieve the best global safety performance in our 126-year history," Peabody president Richard Navarre said.
"We improved our global safety rate more than 20 per cent, and the past three years have been our safest."
Peabody honored the Farmersburg mine in Indiana with its third consecutive President’s Award for its completion of last year with zero reportable incidents.
The national average for surface coal mines, according to preliminary federal data, was 1.93 per 200,000 hours worked.
“Farmersburg has a tradition of safety excellence, having operated for almost three years without an incident,” officials said.
The complex – which produced 3.5 million tons last year – earned the US Department of Labor’s Sentinels of Safety Award in 2007 in the large US coal operation category.
Taking the award across the producer’s underground operations is the Gateway mine in Randolph County, Illinois, which achieved a 1.05 incidence rate, the best underground safety record in the company's history. The national average in 2009 was 5.91.
Gateway shipped approximately 3.2 million tons last year.
The company said three other Peabody mines achieved zero incidents in 2009.
They included the Cottage Grove operation in Illinois; the Miller Creek Mine in Indiana; and the Lee Ranch Mine in New Mexico.
Peabody sold 244Mt and had $US6 billion in revenues in 2009.
