More Pit Closures and increased coal imports threaten UK mining industry

The largest producer of coal in Britain today is UK Coal Ltd. In January 2005 their new year's present to the workforce at Ellington Colliery in Northumberland, the last deep mine in the North East, was to announce its closure. UK Coal claim safety problems are to blame, but the NUM dispute this, and are fighting once more to save the pit. UK Coal told NUM leader Ian Lavery that there is no such thing as a coal industry - it is a coal business. (Shades of Thatcher's "there is no such thing as society" here?)

This fits in with their current policy of shutting pits here and importing coal from abroad in the interest of making a quick buck. The future of coal in Britain is not included in the equation. Tthe set-back at Ellington can be added to UK Coal's closure of the three-pit Selby complex in Yorkshire in 2004, and what remains of the nation's coal industry is pitiful indeed. The major deep mines now left in the UK are:

Site and Location:
Aberpergwm Colliery, Glyn Neath; Tower Colliery, Rhondda-Cynon Taff; Hay Royds Colliery, Huddersfield; Daw Mill Colliery, Warwickshire; Kellingley Colliery, Yorkshire; Maltby Colliery, Yorkshire; Rossington Colliery, Yorkshire; Thoresby Colliery, Notts; Welbeck Colliery, Notts; Harworth Colliery, Notts.

In addition there were 6 smaller deep mines in production at 29 March 2004: Ayle Colliery, owned by Ayle Colliery Co Ltd, in Northumberland; Blaentillery Colliery, owned by Blaentillery Mining Ltd, in Torfaen; Eckington Colliery, owned by Eckington Colliery Partnerships, in Derbyshire; Nanthir Colliery, owned by M & W A Anthracite Ltd, in Neath-Port Talbot; Monument Colliery, owned by M Bradley, M Bradley and R Ashly, in Gloucestershire; Geison Colliery, owned by S & T Fuels (Partnership), in Rhondda-Cynon Taff.

The number of people employed in the deep-mining industry as at December 2004 is given as 5,462. (Source: DTI website http://www.dti.gov.uk/energy/coal/index.shtml.

Everyone knows that British energy use is on the increase (global warming with your tea, vicar), so where are the extra coal, gas and oil coming from, if our own production is decreasing? The answer, simply, is that we're importing more and more of our energy needs. 2002 was the last year we were a net producer of coal, mining 29.5 million tonnes ourselves (16.4 million deep-mined and 13.1 open cast) and importing 28.7 million tonnes.

But 2003, ominously, saw Britain for the first time in its history become a net importer of coal. We managed only 27.7 million tonnes of home-produced coal (15.6 million deep-mined and 12.1 million open cast) but imported 31.9 million tonnes. In 1997 we produced 46.9 million tonnes (30.2 million deep-mined, and 16.7 million open cast) and we imported just 19.8 million tonnes. (If you want a real comparison, in 1983, the year before the strike, 170 pits produced 119.24 million tonnes of coal and employed 191,700 people.)

The 2004 figures will be even worse when they come out, as the three-pit Selby complex and Hatfield Main in Doncaster have all shut since 2003, and Ellington is scheduled for closure imminently. This will result in our home-produced output declining again in 2004, so we'll have to import even more to make up the shortfall. This is borne out in the latest DTI interim figures:

"Coal production in the three months to November 2004 at 6.4 million tonnes was 12.1 per cent lower than in the corresponding period of 2003. Deep-mined production was down 20.9 per cent. Opencast production was down 2.2 per cent. Imports of coal were 7.2 per cent higher, at 9.1 million tonnes." (DTI website, 27 January 2005.)

Bonkers is just a polite word to describe what's going on.

Government Coal Statistics on the Internet
Two main government Internet sites provide coal and other energy statistics. The Coal Authority is on: http://www.coal.gov.uk and the DTI's energy figures can be found on: http://www.dti.gov.uk/energy/coal/index.shtml.