Competition for lethal gas

Three very similar events concurred — a rarity in the business world. Firstly, French entrepreneurs offered a number of big Ukrainian coalmines to cooperate in mine gas utilization within the framework of the Kyoto Protocol. French Ambassador to Ukraine Jacques Faure confirmed the se­riousness of his compatriots’ in­ten­tions, stressing that “our companies offer methane utilization that will turn its typically negative impact on the environment into a positive one.” Later the Canadian company 3P International Energy announced its intentions to start exploring methane deposits in the Donbas. Finally the Russian Gazprom, somewhat unexpectedly, talked about establishing a joint stock company addressing similar issues with Ukraine. It looks like a new page will be turned in the tragic, often bloody history of the miners’ struggle against their eternal foe. Yet it also raises many questions.

For as long as the Donbas has existed, explosive mine gas has reaped a bitter harvest. In the region’s villages one can still hear stories about “brownie Shubin” who allegedly haunts abandoned mines and from time to time attacks defenseless workers with a wall of fire. Science still doesn’t have a single answer to the question where the insidious methane comes from. According to one popular version, methane forms together with coal out of organic remnants of luxurious prehistoric vegetation. According to another version, the gas comes up from the abundant oil deposits located somewhere deep underground, a few kilometers deeper than the layers of Donetsk anthracite which are now worked on. In any case mine gas is a real serial killer of Ukrainian miners: the most serious disasters in Ukraine’s coal industry, with dozens or even hundreds of victims, were caused precisely by the “methane factor.”

In the late 1960s they even allegedly tried to tame the venomous gas by means of an underground nuclear explosion in the miners’ town of Yenakieve: local stories state that a written off warhead from an intercontinental missile was brought to one of the local mines, which was later blasted, after the local citizens were evacuated under the pretense that civil defense drills were held. It didn’t help.

For decades strategic approaches in struggling against methane remained the same: tho­rough ventilation of mine workings, controlling the mine atmo­sphere, a categorical ban on the use of open fires at workplace and… a blind hope for miners’ luck.

It’s quite clear that ordinary miners themselves tried to create an intuitive system of detection and protection from the lethal “brownie Shubin.” They stated, for instance, that if in the underground coalface one breathes intensively with mouth open and then licks one’s lips, the sugary taste will indicate an increased methane concentration. Experienced miners taught newcomers to watch for a peculiar crackling of coal layers that supposedly precedes unexpected gas emissions. Unfortunately, statistics of miners’ deaths suggest these primitive methods were ineffective.

Moreover, it is precisely the familiar attitude of old hands to the lethal gas that provokes the lion’s share of underground accidents. Anonymous “well-wishers” from among workers often either cut off completely or block a mine’s gas analyzers, which should automatically switch off the equipment in case of increased methane concentration, co­vering the sensing element, say, by a condom. This outrage takes place pursuing one specific goal: to “give coal to the country,” ignoring all danger.

Once the government of Yulia Tymoshenko attempted to introduce hourly wages at the most dangerous, the so-called over-category coal­mines, to discourage miners from chasing the plan at the expense of their lives. But the management, which got used to getting state subsidies based on the amount of extracted coal, successfully killed the initiative. However, as the people’s deputy Mykhailo Volynets reassures, abroad this simple measure decreases the risks of methane explosion many-fold, “while in our country the miner who felt approaching danger and during the work shift switched off the cleaning unit, knows that he left his family without means of subsistence,” the experienced miner states with open bitterness.

At the same time, mining enterprises in the Donbas tried to learn not to dispose of this valuable energy source but to make good use of it. Perhaps the first successful attempt in this regard took place thirty years ago at the Donetsk Gorky coalmine, when water for miners’ baths was heated by means of accumulated underground gas.

In the late 1990s near the village of Vuhledar, 30 kilometers from Donetsk, a gas station was built, which filled up a few dozen trucks with cheap and environmentally friendly fuel every day. The zest of the new building lied in the fact that the gas was supplied not from the header pipe, but extracted from the earth nearby. Opportunely, new coal fields were prepared for development — precisely under the gas station a big mine was designed.

After independence, the Donetsk Zasiadko coalmine, which traditionally suffers from abundant gas emissions, became a leader in solving the methane problem. This rich enterprise, which produces over three million tons of coal annually, thought big and bought a modular station for methane utilization from the world famous Austrian-American producers. This expensive example of a foreign hi-tech solution is regularly shown to honorary guests of the “miners’ capital.” But the owners wish to withhold the economical side of the issue: the price of “free” underground gas, after taking into account expenses for maintenance of numerous drainage boreholes, computer-controlled system of shutters, wear and tear of the unique equipment: exceeds the price of a cubic meter of traditional natural gas by at least two times.

Drastic changes in the approach to the problem of underground methane happened when the authorities of coalmines started to realize that one can earn money by means of mine gas within the framework of the Kyoto Protocol.

Methane, as it is known, was re­cognized one of the main threats to the pla-net’s ozone layer, so industrially developed countries voluntarily agreed to pay “green” bonuses. This is done through a system of quotas that was set up in the Japanese city from whence the protocol received its name.

The abovementioned Zasiadko coalmine was the first company in Ukraine to sell the conventional units of methane emissions decrease. As Yukhym Zviahilsky, the actual owner of the enterprise, explained, the National Agency of Ecological Investments passed 14.6 million tons of conventional emissions over to the Japanese firm Marubeni Corporation. The price was not revealed, but specialists estimate it at over 15 million dollars. No wonder the coalmine soon announced plans to invest money in the exploration of several gas-containing territories in the Donetsk region. At least one of them, Krasnolymanska, is promising in terms of methane, so in the future it can also be used for “Kyoto purposes,” with the respective currency payments.

The coal company Krasnodonvuhillia, which already received 589 thousand euros within the framework of the project of methane utilization, initiated in 2006, became the next receiver of green grants. At present such famous enterprises as the mines Krasnolymanska, Pivdennodonbaska No. 1, Krasno­ar­miy­s­ka-Zakhidna, Kom­somolets Don­basu, etc. hurry to profit on the gas emissions decrease. The reserves vast: according to official estimates of the Ministry of Fuel and Energy, only four percent of mine methane is used in the country so far.

Kyoto is an ecological game, where subsidies are only formally connected with real production, and the domestic coal industry worked this scheme out long ago.

The following question remains open: why did the Russian Gazprom suddenly want to create a joint stock company with its younger brother, Naftohaz of Ukraine, for the production of methane. Since the deposits of the latter are substantially different from the Siberian gas it is used to. Mine gas is fairly evenly dissipated in coal layers, it will come to surface gradually, little by little, and there is no magic place where it spouts from the ground, making mo-ney for its owner.

For example, the transnational giant BG Group, which has recently announced its plans to build a cutting-edge plant of liquefied methane in Australia, plans to finance the building a few thousand drainage boreholes, which will cost them a few billion dollars. The Russian oil-gas monopolist is hardly ready to invest similar sums in the energy independence of Ukraine.

The statement of the head of Gazprom Aleksei Miller (“The work of the JSC will enable to use leading technologies of coal gas extraction, it will open new prospects for our co­operation — now in developing untraditional sources”) doesn’t add clarity, since according to prominent Ukrainian experts, Gazprom doesn’t possess any know-how regarding methane at present.

Most likely, as, in particular, Valerii Borovyk, the head of the Alliance “New Energy of Ukraine” says, it deals with the disguised, “soft” entrance of the Russian energy supplier directly to our internal market. With the following strategic goal: to seize the appealing Ukrainian “pipe.” And if simultaneously they will ma­nage to drive off those obtrusive western businessmen, who threaten to “dilute” the monopoly of Gazprom in natural energy sources, from Ukrainian methane deposits, it will be even better.

If it is really so, the miner’s “brow­nie Shubin” needs not to worry: its underground reign is not endangered so far.