Alpha Natural Resources has agreed to pay $200 million to resolve a range of civil and criminal penalties linked to the Upper Big Branch accident as well as other liabilities it inherited when it bought Massey Energy in June, the Wall Street Journal said, citing several people familiar with the settlement.

 

The global settlement will resolve civil fines expected to be issued on Tuesday by the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) related to last year's accident at Massey's mine that killed 29 coal miners in West Virginia, the newspaper said.

 

In a separate report, the paper said Federal regulators are expected to issue the largest fine ever to a U.S. mining company in connection with the Massey Energy accident.

 

MSHA, which is set to release its report on Tuesday on the accident at the Upper Big Branch mine, is expected to issue about 360 safety citations, the Journal said.

 

"We haven't seen the final report itself, so we're not prepared to comment," a spokesman for Alpha Natural Resources, which bought Massey and will be responsible for all fines, told the Journal.

 

The Journal said a spokeswoman for the agency could not be immediately reached for comment.

 

Both Alpha Natural Resources and MSHA could not immediately be reached for comment by Reuters outside regular U.S. business hours.

 

(Reporting by Sakthi Prasad in Bangalore; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman)

 

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