Data / Mines / Common shale

Common shale mines in the US: 50 open mines

MSHA lists 50 open common shale mines in the US, run by 42 operators and employing 546 people. Since January 1, 2022 its inspectors issued 1,329 citations and orders there with $1,068,036 in proposed penalties, and operators reported 85 injury or illness cases, 1 of them fatal. The operators with the most open mines are General Shale Brick, Inc.; Ed Pelletier & Sons Co; Carolina Stalite Company LP. Data from MSHA, November 6, 2026.

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Open mines

50

Operators

42

Employees

546

Active

24

Intermittent

22

Temporarily Idled

4

Mines run by individuals, counted and not listed

3

Citations and orders since January 1, 2022

1,329

Significant and substantial

255 (19.2%)

Closure orders

30

High negligence or reckless

88

Proposed penalties

$1,068,036

Amount paid so far

$814,396

Inspections

565

Inspector hours on site

5,393

Citations per inspection

2.35 (all mines 2.30)

Accident reports

90

Injury and illness cases

85

Fatalities

1

Latest MSHA record

November 4, 2026

Operators with the most open mines

Ranked by open mines, then by citations. Sole proprietors and individuals are not listed.

Operators with the most citations

Citations and orders issued since January 1, 2022 at their open mines here.

Mines with the most citations

Open mines, ranked by citations and orders since January 1, 2022.

States

Citations and injury cases by year

Calendar years since 2022; 2026 runs to the date of the MSHA files.

Standards cited most at common shale mines

Sections of Title 30 of the Code of Federal Regulations named on the citations, with the part each belongs to.

Injury and illness cases at common shale mines

Accident reports by degree of injury, as the operator reported them to MSHA.

What the accident reports at common shale mines describe

Accident classification, as MSHA codes the circumstances that contributed most directly.

Equipment named in accident reports at common shale mines

Updated November 6, 2026. Read from US Department of Labor, Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA), Open Government Data Sets. US government work, public domain. Counts come from the MSHA files published on November 6, 2026. An open mine is one MSHA lists as Active, Intermittent, New Mine, Temporarily Idled or NonProducing; 13,673 were open that day. Citations, penalties, inspections and accident reports run from January 1, 2022. A citation is an inspector's allegation and an operator can contest it; the penalty is the amount MSHA first proposed, before any contest or settlement. An operator is the legal entity MSHA assesses, and a parent company is its controller. Mines run by sole proprietors or by individuals are counted in every total and are not named. This page uses MSHA data and is not endorsed or certified by MSHA. Free to reuse with credit to SpecStream under CC BY 4.0. Spot a wrong value? Write to [email protected] with the link to this page.