The Nor­we­gi­an coal mining in Spits­ber­gen is expec­ted to yield a defi­ci­te in 2012: The mining com­pa­ny Store Nor­ske has announ­ced to be in the red during the ongo­ing year on a sca­le that the com­pa­ny has not seen sin­ce the ope­ning of the then new mine Svea Nord 12 years ago. Today, the main reason is a seve­ral months long pro­duc­tion stop in Svea, whe­re only mar­gi­nal parts of the coal are left: the qua­li­ty is on the decrease, the pro­por­ti­on of stones within the coal is going up, making a cos­t­ly gra­ding plant neces­sa­ry.

When the best parts of the coal seams in Svea Nord whe­re mined around 2003, the com­pa­ny would pro­du­ce as much as 12,854 tons per year and employee. In 2011, this value was down to 3,922 tons. The low coal pri­ces on the world mar­ket con­tri­bu­te to the dif­fi­cult situa­ti­on. The com­pa­ny plans to redu­ce the num­ber of employees from curr­ent­ly 380, but wants to achie­ve this wit­hout dis­mis­sals.

In recent years, Store Nor­ske lea­ders have recei­ved cri­ti­zism for focus­sing on lawsuits with sub­con­trac­tors and for­mer direc­tor Robert Her­man­sen, who was then con­vic­ted and is curr­ent­ly in pri­son, but nevert­hel­ess enjoys popu­la­ri­ty, rather than mining its­elf. Curr­ent­ly, Store Nor­ske is pre­pa­ring a new mine at Lun­ckef­jel­let, north of Sveagru­va, for mining. On the long term, the com­pa­ny aims at new mines in untouch­ed are­as, pos­si­bly at the moun­tain Ispal­len south of Sveagru­va or Ope­raf­jel­let east of Lon­gye­ar­by­en.

Source: Sval­bard­pos­ten (4912)