The Black Castle Mining complex received the Bradbury Safety award for marking a non-fatal days lost rate of zero in 2009 while working more than 668,000 hours; crews did not incur a single lost-time injury during that period.

The Long Fork Coal complex took home the Green Miner award for its environmental management as well as crews’ compliance to company standards.

Both companies received their awards at Massey’s annual coal expo and ceremony, held Tuesday in Charleston, West Virginia. The producer honors its own mines each March for efforts in both categories.

“Massey Energy is committed to environmental excellence and being the coal industry’s safety leader,” chairman Don Blankenship said.

In 2009, for the third consecutive year, Massey’s mines marked their best safety performances ever, recording an overall NFDL rate of 1.67, well below the industry average.

“In total, more than 50 Massey Energy operations completed 2009 without any lost-time injuries,” the company noted.

Last year also marked the producer’s best environmental performance since Massey became a publicly traded company.

In other news, a company executive said this week that Massey was preparing to send its first metallurgical coal shipment to China to capitalize on Asian steelmaker demand.

According to the Associated Press, Massey vice-president Mike Bauersachs told an industry crowd at the Raymond James Institutional Investor Conference in Florida this week that while China was a huge market, the company saw greater promise from India.

“We’ll probably ship a couple million tons of coal in there next year,” he said. “India could surpass China in met coal imports this decade.”

Massey announced in January that it had inked a memorandum of understanding with India-based Jindal Steel and Power for the development of international underground mining projects.

The companies will work together on the bidding, development and operation of projects, and will maintain a focus on India, Mongolia, Australia and the United States, though the MoU is not limited to those locations.

"We believe there is great potential for synergies between Massey and JSPL," Blankenship said at the time.

"We expect that by combining our technical expertise in underground mining with JSPL's broad portfolio of international assets and businesses we will be able to establish profitable joint ventures that will both extend Massey's coal-producing opportunities and provide lower cost, more stable energy supply for Jindal's planned global expansion."

Massey will oversee the details of mine project plan development, and will provide technical mining expertise, technical staff and project management.

The AP said that Massey had a similar deal with Indian operator Essar Group, which recently purchased West Virginia-based Trinity Coal Partners and 200 million tons of reserves in a $US600 million deal.

“We feel very good about our traditional markets and good about developing markets,” Bauersachs told the news service.