Yesterday’s news on this site mentioned that repair works in mine 7, which was partly flooded by meltwater during the extremely warm days in July, were still ongoing. This was, however, already outdated at the time of publication: the first coal left mine 7 already on Saturday late evening, as the mining company Store Norske Spitsbergen Kulkompani told Svalbardposten.
Mine 7 (to the right of the image centre) on the mountain Breinosa near Longyearbyen. Further back and to the left the small ice cap Foxfonna.
Large parts of mine 7 are situated under Foxfonna.
A lot of repair work needed to be done after the flooding in July. Amongst others, large parts of the electrical equipment had to be renewed. Now, coal can be shipped again to the local coal power plant in Longyearbyen and to international customers. Production work is now going on almost 24/7 in two long shifts to produce as much coal as possible. Nevertheless, Store Norske will probably have to accept an economicaly poor result this year, with the production stop and expensive repair works in mine 7 being only one factor. Other factors include the general difficulties of the world economy due to corona and the closing of Sveagruva.
Smaller repair works will still be going on for some time while production is already going on. Store Norske aims also at making sure that a flooding on this scale will not happen again. Large parts of mine 7 are situated under the ice cap Foxfonna, so meltwater ingressions during the summer season are not unheard of, but normally it has been possible to control them by pumping the water out. Larger pumps will now be part of the technical solution to this problem.