Zarechnaya mine shuts down due to carbon monoxide levels - ministry
KEMEROVO. Aug 7 (Interfax) - The Zarechnaya mine, a division of Zarechnaya Coal Company in Kemerovo Region, has shut down coal production due to high levels of carbon monoxide, Russia's Energy Ministry reported on its website.
"Excessive CO content was reported at face No. 1302 in the Zarechnaya mine at 5:50 a.m. on August 7. The mine dispatcher called the mine rescue brigade at 5:51 a.m. There were 155 people in the mine, seven people in the hazardous section. Everyone came to the surface on their own at 7:57 a.m.," the ministry said.
Mine rescue workers have been dispatched into the mine to study the mine workings and lay a hose for remote sampling of air.
Zarechnaya Coal said it would comment on the situation later.
The Kemerovo regional administration's Coal Industry Department told Interfax that irregularities in coal mining procedures may have been one reason for the high carbon monoxide levels in the mine.
"Preliminarily, according to one version of events, the reason for the excess [carbon monoxide] was the spontaneous combustion of coal in a worked-out area because measures to prevent endogenous underground fires had not been fully observed," the department said.
It said a mine rescue brigade was looking for the source of the carbon monoxide. Yevgeny Khlebunov, the region's deputy governor responsible for the fuel and energy complex and the ecology, was in charge of a special task force investigating the causes of the shut-down and which included representatives of the authorities and of the company itself.
The coal department said Zarechnaya Coal Company produced 1.2 million tonnes of coal in January-June 2017, down from 2.4 million tonnes on the same period of last year. The Zarechnaya mine cut production to 400,000 tonnes from 900,000 tonnes.
Zarechnaya Coal Company includes the Zarechnaya mine with the Oktyabrsky mine site; Aleksiyevskaya mine; Anzherskoye mine administration, which is being liquidated; the Sibirskaya mine and Serafimovsky site, which are under construction; the Sputnik coal washing plant; a coal terminal at the Latvian port of Ventspils; and a number of auxiliary enterprises.
A court put Zarechnaya Coal Company and its mines on bankruptcy credit watch in February this year. TOO Ugol Kazakhstana acquired 64% of LLC Interconsulting, which owns 99% of Zarechnaya, in June. The company was bought with together with debt, the paper said.