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China Plans to Shut 5,000 Small Coal Mines by 2010 (Update1)

By Wang Ying

Jan. 22 (Bloomberg) -- China, the world's biggest producer and consumer of coal, will shut more than 5,000 small pits, accounting for about 8 percent of the nation's production capacity, to improve safety, a government bureau said.

The mines capable of producing a total of more than 200 million metric tons will be shut by 2010, Li Yizhong, the head of China's work safety bureau, told reporters in Beijing today. The nation's current coal production capacity is between 2.5 and 2.6 million tons, spokesman Huang Yi said.

China is cracking down on poorly managed, privately run mines to rein in industrial accidents. The nation's pits, the most dangerous in the world, had 4,746 fatalities in 2006, accounting for 80 percent of global mining deaths. China's small mines account for one-third of total output and two- thirds of fatalities, Xinhua said in November.

``We will severely punish those small mine owners who neglect work safety amid the country's soaring coal demand,'' Li said.

China plans to cut the combined production capacity at small mines to 700 million tons by 2010 from 900 million tons currently, Li said. The target is to reduce the number of small mines to 10,000 within three years, from 16,000, he said. The nation has closed 11,155 small mines since 2005 to improve efficiency and safety, according to Li.

China's death toll from coal mine accidents fell 21 percent to 3,770 in 2007 from a year earlier after the nation closed small pits, the government said earlier this month.

The country's coal mines still face a severe lack of safety controls, Zhao Tiechui, director of coal-mine safety at the State Administration of Work Safety, said at the time.

Coal demand in China, which became a net importer for the first time in January last year, may rise 5.3 percent to 2.76 billion tons this year, the Coal Sales and Transportation Association of China said Jan. 15.

To contact the reporter on this story: Wang Ying in Beijing at ywang30@bloomberg.net ;

Last Updated: January 22, 2008 02:25 EST