The company sold 20.1 million tons in Q2 2012 compared to the 23Mt in Q2 2011.

Reduced sales were driven by the high utility stockpiles built up after the very warm winter and related low natural gas prices.

This compounded the impact of the Q2 “shoulder season” when low demand for electricity allows utilities to complete annual plant maintenance.

Shipments from the Spring Creek mine were further reduced by flooding at the Midwest Energy Resources Company terminal on Lake Superior in mid-June that delayed approximately 400,000 tons of shipments to the second half of the year.

Cloud Peak president and chief executive officer Colin Marshall said during the quarter the company acquired the Youngs Creek project containing approximately 450Mt of in-place coal and 38,800 acres of surface land in the Northern Powder River Basin to further its potential for increased Asian exports.

“We are pleased with our operational and financial performance during what we knew would be a very challenging second quarter,” he said.

“As expected, shipments were unusually slow as some customers continued to substitute low price natural gas for coal at a time when they had high coal stockpiles and low electricity demand.

“During the second quarter, the operations did a good job of controlling costs as we managed our business in line with the reduced demand.

“We were very pleased to announce our successful acquisition of the significant Youngs Creek coal and land assets.

“This transaction builds our Northern PRB asset base to allow us to meet anticipated strong international demand for our coal.”

For 2012, Cloud Peak Energy has contracted to sell 92.6Mt, of which 90.5Mt are under fixed-price contracts with a weighted-average price of $13.34 per ton.

Assuming current low over-the-counter prices for its contracted but unpriced 2012 tons, its weighted-average price would be $13.23/t.

The company generated cash from operations of $81.3 million for the first six months of 2012.