Mine 7 back in pro­duc­ti­ve ope­ra­ti­on again

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.

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