The mines were recognised for their excellence in worker safety and working in tandem with the company’s goal of zero incidents and an incident-free workplace.

The producer’s 120-person Francisco underground mine marked a significant reduction in its incident rate – by half over the last three years straight – and recorded a 1.09 rate for the last year on 900,000 tons of output, it said. The rate is 84% better than the national average across underground operations for 2007.

Peabody’s Viking surface mine reported a perfect record for the year with zero incidents per 200,000 work hours on 1.7 million tons of coal mined in the last calendar year. Across all US mines in 2007, the national average was 2.11 per 200,000 hours worked.

Furthermore, the 140-man complex had a four-year record of no reportable incidents through the first quarter of 2008.

“I congratulate Viking and Francisco underground for serving as examples of what we can accomplish when we collectively share and live out the safety vision of operating safe workplaces that are incident free," said Peabody executive vice-president and chief operating officer Eric Ford.

In the first quarter of this year, Peabody’s mines earned a 1.50 incident rate overall, the safest in its 125-year history.

“The company is on track for a record year,” officials said.