Coal news and updates

A gas explosion at a coal mine in southwestern China killed at least 15 people and left 18 others missing, local authorities said.

 

Monday’s blast took place late morning in a mine run by Jinshangou Coal Industry Co. in the city of Chongqing, the municipal coal-mine safety inspection bureau said in an online statement. State media said two of the 35 miners underground made it out after the explosion.

 

Rescue work was under way at the mine in Chongqing’s Yongchuan district, and municipal authorities ordered all coal mines in the city to suspend operations pending fresh safety inspections, the bureau said.

China’s State Administration of Work Safety, the national regulator, has sent a team to the scene to oversee rescue work and ordered an investigation, it said in a separate statement. It offered no immediate potential cause of the gas explosion.

 

Local inspectors recently cited a “Jinshangou coal mine” in Yongchuan district for “safety hazards” and ordered a halt to underground mining activities there, according to an Oct. 14 notice published by the Chongqing coal-mine safety inspection bureau.

 

During inspections conducted Oct. 9-12, the bureau found faulty sensors and communications systems, as well as disrepair to the ventilation system and passageways in that mine, the notice said. It’s unclear whether that mine was the one where the explosion took place.

 

Calls to Jinshangou Coal Industry owner Jiang Wenge rang unanswered.

 

Monday’s explosion coincided with a national conference of work-safety inspectors in Beijing, an occasion that President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Keqiang marked by calling for greater efforts to improve supervision and enforcement of industrial safety.

SOurce:WSJ