Despite the lost production, Reece was reluctant to criticise the DMR. “I can understand why they responded the way they did. The department was in a difficult situation. They were operating at Australian Standards, so it was awkward all round. It has caught the problem, but I suppose the (industry) repercussions have been fairly drastic. We were fortunate, I suppose, to thread the eye of the needle and come up with a solution that kept us going.”
One of the many questions left unanswered is why authorities in Queensland and NSW acted so differently when faced with the same set of circumstances. Queensland’s Department of Mines and Energy decided to take the less drastic route of giving the 13 underground coal mines affected in that state a grace period to show if they could continue using the units safely. “We told companies to do a risk assessment and that expired on January 29,” said a senior employee of the Queensland Mines Department, who did not want to be identified. “That was then extended to May 31, under slightly more stringent conditions. They had to prove that even if (the power units) failed, they would not endanger people at the mines.”
The Department had received all the risk assessments, and spoken to Londonderry, Austdac and the NSW DMR. “We realised we couldn’t fix the problem perfectly by January 29. It will take time to get the new equipment designed, tested and certified, so we have extended the deadline to May 31, which was basically the time that people thought it would take to clear it up.”
In the meantime the affected mines had set up various safeguards and gas detection systems to cover any potential problems with the power units. “In the long-run they will replace these units. And at the moment they are all inter-locked, so they won’t cause any major heartburn for anybody. There is absolutely no safety risk.”
The department employee declined to estimate how much production was lost in Queensland. “A lot of mines were either shut down or reducing operations for Christmas, and a couple were moving longwalls. So I don’t think production was affected badly.”
In New South Wales, the DMR provided an exemption from shutting down the power units to at least one operation — the Ulan colliery north west of Mudgee. Ulan’s original exemption ran until March 5 but has been extended until the end of the current longwall block, estimated at another 4-6 weeks. By then, the mine hopes to be able to install new, certified, power supply units. Paul Healey, Ulan’s operations manager, said the mine “may have lost a day or two, but it hasn’t as been as bad as at first thought”. He said the DMR notice “certainly caught us by surprise”
“I don’t have a problem with the DMR’s action, though I wouldn’t say I was happy with it. We were fortunate in that we are a gas-free mine.”
But Healey did raise concerns about the adequacy of testing procedures, which allowed potentially unsafe power supply units to operate in mines for lengthy periods.
“It is a concern if they change the methodology after something is out in the field. You’d hope that these things would be sorted out in the initial approvals process, rather than after they’ve been put into service.”
The DMR’s Sneddon agreed. “We have been looking at putting pressure both on mining companies and equipment manufacturers to play a stronger role (in testing), instead of standing back from it and leaving it to regulators to do the whole process. Under the Occupational, Health and Safety act, the over-reaching act that covers all of industry, there is a requirement to use fit for service equipment. And what I’ve been pointing out to people is the need to take that a bit closer to heart, both the people that supply it and use it.”
The DMR is shaking up its own safety processes by completing a wide-ranging “file search” of existing equipment approvals.
“Having found there was a problem with one of these (IS) units, we are doing a complete review of all of our files, to make sure there are no other units that we have concerns about,” Sneddon said.
“Those that we have concerns about, we have re-submitted for testing. Bear in mind that Austdac are far and away the biggest supplier, and they have developed alternative units now. So if we find any others, they are not likely to have the same sort of impact (as the earlier notice).”
The power unit saga has left the industry wearing losses, but trying to figure out the ultimate cause of the disruption is proving difficult. Did the problem reside at the DMR, the testing laboratory, the manufacturer or a combination of the three?
Dartbrook’s Reece was reluctant to pin the blame. “I think it would be a brave man who would blame anybody. It has been unfortunate, but where does it start and where does it finish? I don’t think anybody is in a strong position to be pointing the finger at anyone else.”
