Booth Energy Group’s Cambrian Coal Corp. paid nothing up front for a Teco Energy Inc. unit that controls a collection of surface and underground mines, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. Teco said that it may receive $60 million should coal prices reach “certain levels” over the next five years. Bargain-basement coal deals are proliferating as producers bail out of an industry stuck in its worst downturn in decades. Miners are facing a slowing global economy, escalating competition from cheap natural gas and mounting environmental and mining regulations. In February, West Virginia businessman Jim Justice paid Russia’s OAO Mechel $5 million and assumed some debt to buy back operations that he had sold to the company in 2009 for $568 million.
