State Ministry of Work Safety director-general Li Yizhong will permanently close all small mines by the first half of 2008, a process that will include three stages, according to Chinese news wire service ChinaCSR.
The first phase of closures has already begun, according to the report, with the idling of 6000 operations this past May. The second and current phase of the closures, which will wrap up early next year, includes the shuttering of older mines.
Finally, in a phase that will wrap up in 2008, the Government plans to focus on “improving the management capacity” of legal operations.
In China’s largest area for mining, the Shanxi province, 4876 mines have been closed thus far, ChinaCSR said.
While small mine numbers are dropping, interest in unmined reserves is picking up steam. A top Chinese official said last month that the county will spend $US5 billion by 2020 to search for coal reserves.
China, the world leader in coal production, has known commercially recoverable coal reserves of 288 billion tons and total estimated coal resources of 5.5 trillion tons, according to Zhang Yuzhuo, vice-president of China's biggest coal firm, Shenhua Group, in a June China Daily report.
