The low coal pri­ces on the world mar­ket make life even more dif­fi­cult than expec­ted for the Nor­we­gi­an mining com­pa­ny Store Nor­ske Spits­ber­gen Kul­kom­pa­ni (SNSK). Alre­a­dy in spring, the Nor­we­gi­an govern­ment, which is owning almost all shares, had to help the SNSK out of trou­ble with a loan. Due to the dra­ma­tic situa­ti­on, the manage­ment has deci­ded to take some dra­stic steps:

• The pro­duc­tion in the mines at Sveagru­va (Svea Nord and the new mine in Lun­ckef­jel­let) will be stop­ped. A mini­mum crew of about 50 miners will ensu­re main­tainan­ce to keep the opti­on of future pro­duc­tion available.
• If the coal pri­ces do not reco­ver until 2019, the mines at Sveagru­va will be clo­sed.
• The pro­duc­tion in the smal­ler mine 7 near Lon­gye­ar­by­en will be increased. 45 miners (until now 24) are sup­po­sed to pro­du­ce 155,000 tons per year (curr­ent­ly 70,000) .
• Fur­ther occur­ren­ces near mine 7 will be pre­pared for mining to ensu­re a pro­duc­tion peri­od of at least 10 years.
• The admi­nis­tra­ti­on will be down­si­zed.

The main­tainan­ce mode in Sveagru­va will requi­re an annu­al bud­get of 95 mil­li­on Nor­we­gi­an Kro­ner, which will have to come from the owner (the gover­ment), accor­ding to the plans of the manage­ment. Nego­tia­ti­ons with the govern­ment are star­ted imme­dia­te­ly.

Altog­e­ther, the num­ber of jobs in Lon­gye­ar­by­en and Sveagru­va will be decreased by 150. Tog­e­ther with tho­se jobs alre­a­dy lost recent­ly, the num­ber of employees is down­si­zed by 150 within 18 months.

Many peo­p­le in Lon­gye­ar­by­en are worried now about the future. A lot of jobs in many com­pa­nies still depend on mining, and the fear is the­re that a mas­si­ve downs­ca­ling of the coal indus­try and rela­ted eco­no­my would have a major nega­ti­ve impact on the local eco­no­my and socie­ty. The poli­ti­cal deba­te about the future eco­no­mic­al struc­tu­re of Lon­gye­ar­by­en has star­ted. One of the mea­su­res to fight the eco­no­mic­al pro­blems is the envi­sa­ged increase of the har­bour faci­li­ties.

Source: Sval­bard­pos­ten (36/2015)