TORONTO (miningweekly.com) – US fossil-fuels producer Consol Energy on Monday said it has received approval from the Mine Safety and Health Administration, the state of Pennsylvania, and United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) officials of its plan to re-enter the Blacksville No 2 mine, in Pennsylvania, which was evacuated on March 12, when smoke was detected exiting the Orndoff shaft.
Since then, Consol, in collaboration with federal and state authorities, had pumped a sufficient amount of water into the mine to complete the water seal and remotely pumped eight isolation wells from the surface to seal off the fire area.
This process was completed on Sunday morning.
Consol said analysis of the continuous mine atmosphere readings that the team had been taking indicated that gas levels remained steady and oxygen levels continued to decrease, which was cause for the company to believe the fire had been successfully extinguished.
"I am extremely proud of the successful collaborative effort from federal and state agencies, the UMWA, contractors/vendors and our employees on site who worked around-the-clock to remotely extinguish a fire in less than twelve days. Without their efforts, we would not be where we are today. Most importantly, we accomplished all of the work without an injury,” Consol senior VP Chuck Shaynak said.
Consol said it would continue monitoring the mine atmosphere before allowing personnel to enter, which was scheduled to begin on Wednesday morning if all atmospheric monitoring continued to indicate that it was safe to enter.
Blacksville No. 2 mine produces about 400 000 t/m of coal under normal operations.