After the emergency at the main enterprise of PJSC Raspadskaya, its subsidiary JSC Raspadskaya-Koksovaya received the right to expand its activities. The company will produce coking coal at the infamous mine named after. Shevyakov in Mezhdurechensk. The causes of the recent fire are still not named, but it was decided not to close the burning mine. At the same time, it turned out that a couple of days before the accident, Rostekhnadzor stopped work on another drift due to violations.
The fire at Raspadskaya, which is located 11 kilometers from Mezhdurechensk, happened on April 19 at a depth of 550 meters. The first information began to come from eyewitnesses through social networks. They saw emergency vehicles leaving for the scene. Soon the information was confirmed by the Ministry of Emergency Situations – six departments of mine rescuers immediately left for the place.
All work at the facility was suspended, people began to be brought to the surface. Initially, the number of workers who were underground was estimated at 183 people, but in the end it turned out that there were much more of them – 275.
The governor of the Kemerovo region, Sergei Tsivilev, also had to intervene in the matter. In his telegram channel, he announced the creation of an operational headquarters that will coordinate actions to eliminate emergencies. This body was headed by the head of the region himself. High-ranking representatives of individual departments began to pull up to the scene. Among them are the Kemerovo inter-district prosecutor for supervision over the execution of laws in the coal mining industry Dmitry Loskovichenko, the prosecutor of Mezhdurechensk Andrey Kalinin. Also, a special commission of Rostekhnadzor went to Raspadskaya.
Soon the authorities reported that all the miners had risen to the surface, and then the Ministry of Emergency Situations announced that open burning had been eliminated.
The media reported that one person was injured in the accident – the miner was diagnosed with carbon monoxide poisoning of moderate severity. Now his life is out of danger.
Law enforcement agencies are conducting an investigation. At the official level, the cause of the fire has not yet been named. Unofficially, they talk about the likelihood of a short circuit in the ventilation drift.
offshore network
The fate of Raspadskaya is closely connected with the shareholders of the British Evraz Plc Roman Abramovich, Alexander Abramov and Alexander Frolov. As of the end of 2012, 87% of the coal asset was owned by the Cypriot offshore Corber Enterprises Ltd. Evraz and Cypriot Adroliv Investments Limited owned this company in equal shares. The latter belonged to the management of Raspadskaya. Then Evraz bought out the second half of Corber Enterprises from partners.
According to a report published on the website of the Corporate Information Disclosure Center, in the second half of 2021, Evraz Plc owned 90.9% of the shares of PJSC Raspadskaya. In the future, information about affiliated persons was not disclosed.
In November 2021, Vedomosti reported that Roman Abramovich intends to buy back a 26.74% stake in Raspadskaya from Evraz for his offshore company Greenleas International Holdings (BVO). This deal was supposed to be part of an effort to spin off high-carbon assets into a separate entity. However, the plans were thwarted by international sanctions, against the background of which Evraz considered the allocation of coal assets inappropriate.
They searched for the dead for months.
In Kuzbass, the major disaster at Raspadskaya on May 8, 2010 has not yet been forgotten. The explosion occurred when more than 300 miners were underground. Then 12 people died and another 59 were injured. 296 people managed to evacuate to the surface. However, a few hours later, when May 9 had already arrived in the region, a second explosion occurred. He claimed the lives of 91 people, another 99 were injured and injured. Many of them are mine rescuers who were looking for the dead and injured after the first explosion. The bodies of the miners who remained underground could not be found for a long time. Seven months after the disaster, 14 miners were declared dead by court order so that their relatives could receive compensation and inherit. As of April 5, 2011, the bodies of 11 miners have not been found.
Separate incidents have happened at Raspadskaya recently. For example, in July last year there was a collapse of the soil. At that time, large-scale consequences were avoided: 188 miners were evacuated, two of them were injured. Two more were considered missing. Later it became known that one of them died, the second was found alive a week later. During the search, one mine rescuer was killed.
The first serious accident occurred at Raspadskaya on October 24, 1982. That day, a methane explosion killed 22 miners.
Closed but not all
After the fire on April 19, 2023, Rostekhnadzor suspended coal mining at Raspadskaya. However, the next day, work was resumed with the exception of two sections – the one where the fire occurred and the ventilation drift, which was stopped on April 17th. As it turned out, a couple of days before the fire, one of the workers was injured there. Rostekhnadzor established that violations were committed during the fixing of the mine working in the drift.
The previous time, the department revealed violations at Raspadskaya in 2021, they related, among other things, to fire safety requirements.
And now, against the background of all this, one of the enterprises of Raspadskaya received the right to develop the open reserves of the mine named after. Shevyakov. In 1992, there was a methane explosion that killed 25 miners. It was the first major accident in the coal industry after the collapse of the USSR. In 1996, the mine was flooded, and its reserves were transferred to the unallocated subsoil fund. JSC Raspadskaya-Koksovaya will develop them in an open-pit mining area. The most interesting thing is that she was the only contender for this field. On April 7, an open auction was held, to which no one else showed up. On April 20, its results were summed up: the “winner” will pay the state 250.7 million rubles at a starting price of 227.9 million rubles. How soon will we hear from there about the new instructions of Rostekhnadzor?
