January 6, 2020 - Alliance Resource Partners, L.P. (NASDAQ: ARLP) today announced that Kirk Tholen has joined the ARLP executive team as Senior Vice President and Chief Strategic Officer ("CSO"), reporting to Joseph W. Craft III, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer and assisting Craft in the development of ARLP’s strategic initiatives. He will be located in the partnership’s Tulsa, Oklahoma office and also serve as President of ARLP’s oil & gas minerals segment. Working with the senior executive team, Tholen’s responsibilities will include creating viable business opportunities for ARLP’s coal business, building its emerging oil & gas minerals business and executing enterprise-wide business strategies and operating plans for long-term growth.

"I am pleased to welcome Kirk Tholen to the Alliance team," said Craft. "Kirk is a respected leader in the energy industry and brings a depth and breadth of knowledge and experience to ARLP. I look forward to working closely with Kirk to extend our core coal business, expand our growing minerals business and pursue other opportunities to deliver on Alliance’s goal of creating value for unitholders."

"Alliance represents and is known for its capital discipline, investment ingenuity and deliberate growth. This has been consistent for over 20 years and the growing minerals platform is a perfect example of a continuation of these core principles. I look forward to working with the Alliance team to expand the minerals portfolio alongside coal and other investible opportunities," said Tholen.

Tholen most recently served as a Managing Director within the Oil & Gas Group and Head of the Acquisitions and Divestitures ("A&D") Practice for Houlihan Lokey in Houston. From 2012 to 2015, he was Head of A&D for Credit Agricole CIB and was responsible for creating and leading their A&D platform to service domestic and cross-border client transactions as well as assisting in reserve-base lending, equity offerings and high yield debt offerings. From 2006 to 2012, Tholen provided business development, marketing, transaction management, negotiating and closing services to clients at Albrecht & Associates, Inc., a sell-side E&P boutique advisory firm. His previous industry experience also includes serving as a Region Engineer for BJ Services from 1996 to 2006, where he provided drilling and fracturing technical services to clients operating in the lower 48 and Gulf of Mexico predominately as a dedicated in-house engineer focused on drilling and completions for BP, Conoco and Devon. Tholen began his career in 1992 joining UNOCAL’s Louisiana inland waters and shallow shelf operation and reservoir engineering team. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette and a Master of Business Administration degree from the University of Houston.

Kirk Tholen