Cliffs Natural Resources Inc. (NYSE: CLF) (Paris: CLF) today announced it has closed on its previously announced acquisition of INR Energy, LLC's coal operations located in southern West Virginia.

The operations include two underground metallurgical coal mines, one surface mine and several development mines. In addition, the facilities include a state-of-the-art coal preparation and processing plant and a new 110-car unit-train batch-weight load-out facility with access to the CSX railroad. This acquisition is expected to incrementally add approximately 68 million tons of metallurgical coal reserves and 51 million tons of thermal coal reserves to Cliffs' current reserve base. In addition, the transaction will increase Cliffs' global coal production capacity to over 9 million tons in 2011 and 11 million tons in 2012.

As previously announced, Cliffs said it would finance the $757 million transaction through available liquidity, including cash on hand and the Company's $600 million credit facility. Cliffs indicated it will report the future results of this business as part of its North American Coal business segment.

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