Europe Mining

http://af.reuters.com/

WARSAW, Nov 10 (Reuters) – Poland could temporarily cut output at several mines over the next four to five years to take surplus coal off the market as the industry deals with record low prices, a member of Poland’s newly elected Law and Justice party said.

Consolidating state-owned power producers could be considered as a next step as the government seeks first to prop up the struggling coal mining sector, Grzegorz Tobiszowski, responsible for coal issues, told Reuters.

The conservative Law and Justice party (PiS), which won parliamentary elections last month, would consider merging the country’s biggest power firms – PGE, Tauron, Enea and Energa, he added.

“Personally I think Poland needs one big power company,” Tobiszowski said, adding this would likely face scrutiny from the EU over anti-monopoly regulations. “If this turns out difficult, we will be working on the formula of two groups”.

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http://www.nytimes.com/

KELLINGLEY, England — Tens of thousands of British coal miners have lost their jobs in recent decades, during the steep decline of an industry that stoked the nation’s industrial rise, sustained it through two world wars and once employed more than one million people.

Chris Jamieson will be one of the very last. In December, his job is set to disappear when Kellingley colliery, Britain’s last deep coal mine, is scheduled to close for good.

In the mine’s empty parking lot, Mr. Jamieson, 50, is already thinking about the moment in a few weeks’ time when the last group of miners is hauled to the surface. He expects to work the final shift at the colliery, which has been reduced to little more than a quarter of its peak work force and is succumbing to pressure from cheaper imported coal.

“I will be putting the lights out,” he said, adding that, after a quarter-century in the industry, he would particularly miss not just his paycheck but the unique camaraderie among colleagues who work together underground.

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http://uk.reuters.com/

WARSAW – Oct 28 Poland’s new government will fight even harder in the European Union to win concessions for its coal-based industry, said Piotr Naimski, tipped to lead the country’s energy ministry following last Sunday’s parliamentary election.

Ninety percent of Poland’s energy is generated from the highly-polluting coal and Warsaw has long opposed an EU drive to curb carbon emissions.

But the conservative, eurosceptic Law and Justice (PiS) party, which won outright parliamentary majority in Sunday’s vote, could take an even harder line than the outgoing centre-right government.

Naimski said the new PiS government would fight “any obstacles” that would prevent Warsaw from sticking to coal rather than developing renewable energy sources.

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http://www.bloomberg.com/

Less than two years ago, Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government dubbed lignite East Germany’s “black gold.” Last week, she reached a deal with utilities that analysts at Berenberg and B. Metzler Seel Sohn & Co. see as the start of the phaseout for the dirtiest power-plant fuel.

“The federal government is taking its gloves off,” Guido Hoymann, an analyst at B. Metzler, said by phone from Frankfurt. “That’s the beginning of the end for this type of energy production. The first step is being made.”

RWE AG, Vattenfall AB and Mitteldeutsche Braunkohlegesellschaft mbH agreed to close plants corresponding to 12 percent of the nation’s total lignite generation capacity in a 1.6 billion euro ($1.8 billion) accord as Germany is falling behind its target to cut carbon emissions. For the remaining 56 units, it’s a question of when they will be forced to shut, Lawson Steele, an analyst at Berenberg, said by phone from London.

Lignite, a sedimentary rock formed from compressed peat, has been a mainstay of German power generation for almost a century and helped underpin growth in Europe’s biggest economy.

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https://euobserver.com/

Poland’s coal-based energy sector provides a livelihood for hundred of thousands of people in Upper Silesia and has the potential to swing Sunday’s (25 October) national election.

In the small Polish town of Brzeszcze, part of the Upper Silesian coal basin, almost half of the 21,000 inhabitants depend on one employer: the KWK Brzeszcze mine, which is soon to be closed.

More then 2,000 men stand to lose their jobs because, for the last couple of years, the mine has been unprofitable – for every tonne of coal sold, the company had to pay an extra 265 zlotys.

If the mine is closed, unemployment in the municipality will skyrocket from its already-high level of 11.6%.

A similar fate probably awaits another 11,000 workers from unprofitable mines run by the biggest state mining company, Kompania Węglowa and 3,000 from JSW.

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