Rio Tinto has received clearance for the pending sale of its Jacobs Ranch coal mine in the US state of Wyoming to Arch Coal from the US Federal Trade Commission.

The $761m deal, which was agreed in March 2009, is expected to close within six weeks.

The Jacobs Ranch mine extracts steam coal using dragline and truck-and-shovel methods.

The site had about 381 million tons of proven and probable reserves as of December 2008 and shipped 42.1 million tonnes of coal last year.