Coal is on the up

MUCH has been said about the slow decline of mining in the UK, especially since the death of Margaret Thatcher.

Britain now produces only a tenth of the coal that it did when she came to power, but anyone who thought Durham coal was no longer being dug out of the soil needs to think again.

It is true that the times of men with pickaxes standing in a lift waiting to be lowered hundreds of feet to a coal face are largely gone.

UK Coal, which operates eight mines across five counties,including Durham, only has two classic “pits”

still going.

The other six are surface level, or opencast mines, burrowing an average of 50ft under the subsoil to skim off coal seams sitting close to the top.

One such mine, Park Wall North, is near Tow Law, in County Durham.

At its deepest it reached down only 85 metres, but more than one million tonnes of coal, valued between £75m and £100m, has been dug out during its working lifetime.

Les Hind, site manager, said: “Fifty per cent of that will be high-heat coking coal, used for making steel in the Tata steelworks in Scunthorpe, and the other 50 per cent is used in Ratcliffe power station, in Nottinghamshire, by Eon energy.

“We are paid by calorie content, basically the amount of energy in the coal – the cleaner the coal, the higher the calorie content.

“The stuff used by Tata is very clean, very low-moisture, high-quality coal.

“Coal used in power stations needs a little bit of ash in it to draw it through the system, but it still needs to be relatively clean.”

One advantage of surface mining over deep mining is that the coal can be got out clean and loaded straight onto transport without the need for washing or much processing.

Another is that deep mining is very expensive and unlikely to be viable unless large deposits are found.

Dave Bolton, regional operations manager for UK Coal, explained the difficult decisions that have to be made before opening up a mine.

“From the first idea, through boreholes being drilled, planning permission being granted and the site being prepared, it can take up to four years before you even take a tonne of coal out.

“So you have to look at the markets and try to estimate what the coal you’re going after will be worth, not today, but three or four years from now.

“When you are looking at whether or not a mine could be viable you also have to look at what sort of condition the site is in, how much muck you have to move to get to the available coal, whether things like pylons or water mains will have to be moved and so on.

“On average, that means having at least 400,000 tonnes to mine.”

If the local community rallies against the mine it can take even longer.

UK Coal tried to open the site at Tow Law in 1996, but had planning permission refused.

When it tried again in 2009 it faced very stiff opposition from local campaigners, including professional horse trainer Howard Johnson, whose land formed part of the proposed site.

To deal with this, UK Coal set up a liaison committee made up of local farmers and residents from Sunniside, a nearby village, to air concerns.

The firm agreed to donate a percentage of profits to the committee to spend on community projects, and paid an additional £300,000 to run a gas main to 200 houses, a farmhouse and an isolated pub.

Between environmental services, the local planning committees and the liaison committee UK Coal agreed more than 100 conditions for mining at the site.

Lorries carry coal away from Park Wall North opencast mine, in Tow Law

Noise monitors were installed in nearby farmhouses to keep blast noise from dynamite under 47 decibels, just below talking volume.

Measures to keep dust levels down were agreed.

Earth taken out during the dig was to be piled up around the hole in buffer mounds to conceal it from view and it would be put back and landscaped afterwards.

Even the type and density of trees to be planted was discussed.

BUT, for Mr Hind, restoration is part of the job. He said:“We have kept a bridle path open during the dig and we will be putting another bridleway and a footpath back in afterwards.

“We have put in two ponds along a watercourse because it used to flood downstream, so we’re reducing that risk.

“We are renovating derelict land around the site as well. That is another reason deep mining is less popular now, because all of the material you extract you’re stuck with on the surface.

“You can’t put it back.”

North-East coal miners take a break.

“People are understandably nervous when we move in, but we’re good neighbours.

“We have an open door policy so anyone can come down and we’ll show them what we’re up to.

“We get a few visits from farmers each year, but we have never had any complaints.”

The 7,500 tonnes of coal which leave the site each week are taken five miles to a train depot at Wolsingham, to save on emissions and avoid driving them through other villages.

From the initial idea to the restoration team leaving, 15 years will have passed.

The actual mining has lasted only three of those, with the pit being at maximum depth for only 12 months.

When you take out running costs, community donations and restoration work, 80 per cent of the mine’s profits have been eaten up.

But the rising price of coal and Britain’s continued dependence on it for energy mean that mining will remain a profitable industry for decades to come.

“Two of the sites we’ve got are coming to an end this year, but we’ve got applications in on another four, and on our land bank we’ve got probably 20 to 30 sites that could be viable,” Mr Hind explains.

Young miners in the Northumberland coalfield during the early 1940s.

“I see coal being important in the energy mix of the country in ten years.

“What will happen to it after that depends on policy, demand, and whether or not we can clean up coal power stations.”

Even as operations at Park Wall North draw down, dumper trucks swap from transporting coal to filling in the hole they have dug, and the restoration team ready themselves to move in and start planting grass seeds.

The future for mining in the North- East is far from over.