Company spokesperson Brad Goldstein said in order to keep mining it had to furlough all but about 130 individuals on its crew.

It follows nearly 10 months of attempts to resolve the situation and efforts to recover the equipment at the longwall panel, where the heating activity originated.

Mine executive vice president Mike Ludlow was unavailable to speak with ILN on Thursday but told a local media outlet late Wednesday that he maintained no expectations that the equipment, valued between $50 and $100 million, could be saved.

“We have made a decision that it's not safe to recover the (machine), so it's going to be sealed in place,” he told the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel.

He added that due to the emergency nature of the incident, the federal guidelines for issuing advance mass furlough notices did not apply.

Despite that, employees are being provided severance.

While the layoffs are considered permanent, he told the paper that he hoped Oxbow would be able to retain another longwall system and potentially hire once again.

“We’d like to think that our business would pick back up in the years going forward and then we would be able to build our workforce and production back to previous levels,” he said.

In the meantime, the mine in Gunnison County will move forward with its work as a continuous mining operation.

Oxbow, which initially evacuated its entire crew on January 9 after discovering elevated gas levels, has since been running at about 80% of normal production levels.

Its typical production capacity is about 5 million tonnes annually.

The mine, which is located near Somerset and neighbours the Bowie and West Elk operations, has been in production since 2001.

Florida-headquartered Oxbow is owned by billionaire Bill Koch.