Mine 7: coal mining until 2025

Nor­we­gi­an coal mining in mine 7 in Advent­da­len near Lon­gye­ar­by­en will be con­tin­ued until 2025, as the mining com­pa­ny Store Nor­ske Spits­ber­gen Kul­kom­pa­ni (SNSK) explai­ned in a press release. The reason is the chan­ged geo­po­li­ti­cal situa­ti­on and its impli­ca­ti­ons for glo­bal ener­gy mar­kets.

Mine 7 is loca­ted on a moun­tain in Advent­da­len.

Ear­lier, 2023 was set as the last year of Nor­we­gi­an coal mining in Spits­ber­gen. One main reason to main­tain coal pro­duc­tion is, so far, the sup­p­ly for the local coal power plant, but the com­mu­ni­ty of Lon­gye­ar­by­en aims at fin­ding a new power solu­ti­on and has not rene­wed the con­tract with the mining com­pa­ny bey­ond 2023.

But the demand for coal on the inter­na­tio­nal mar­kets is high and so are the pri­ces. Hence, SNSK could secu­re good con­tracts until 2025. For many years, the Cla­ri­ant group has been the main cus­to­mer for Nor­we­gi­an coal from Spits­ber­gen, and will remain so until 2025.

In 2021 – befo­re the Rus­si­an war against the Ukrai­ne star­ted, SNSK increased its tur­no­ver to 93 mil­li­on Nor­we­gi­an kro­ner, com­pared to 48 mil­li­on kro­ner in 2020 – wit­hout chan­ges of the annu­al pro­duc­tion.

The­re are curr­ent­ly bet­ween 40 and 45 peo­p­le working in mine 7. SNSK plans to increase the num­ber of employees in mine 7 to 52, with an annu­al pro­duc­tion of 125,000 tons.

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