On 14 December 2014, at the end of the first shift the staff of coal producing section No.2 of the “Heroes of the Space” mine headed by Vitaliy Vil’khov, reported on the fulfillment of the coal production annual plan. Since early 2014 mine-workers have produced 577 830 MT of coal that is 13.2 % of the total coal production.

At the beginning of this year the staff of coal producing section No.2 has performed works mining coal from the production face No.913. Currently mine-workers have been developing the production face No.961 of 250m long with the excavation area of 800m. The rank of coal bed is DG (ДГ). This is a long-wave burning coal which is used at Thermal Power Plants to provide people with power and heat.  

At present the average daily coal output at the second section is 1714 MT. 961^st wall face is furnished with Ukrainian equipment as follows: mechanical support КД-80, mining combine КА-200 and conveyor belt СП - 251.

The second producing section is planning to produce additional 23000 MT of coal by the end of 2014. The total quantity of coal is expected to get produced at 961^st wall face is 362 200 MT.

Reference: The management of “Heroes of the Space” mine has been the first among DTEK companies that fulfilled the production task of 2014.  Mine-workers of two mines – “Blagodatnaya” and “Heroes of the Space” – produced 4.2 mln MT of “black gold” that is almost half a million MT exceeds the previous last year’s rate, and they passed more than 25 km of mine workings.

One of the most serious problems the DTEK company works at it, is associated with the removal/transportation of coal produced by mine-workers from the Anti-Terrorist Operation area. “DTEK ENERGO” accumulated about two million of coal MT at its storage facilities in “DTEK RovenkyAnthracite” and “DTEK SverdlovAnthracite”, and if that issue is not resolved in the nearest future then the follow-up operation of mines will be under the threat of suspension as there no more additional storage facilities for stockpiles. The following DTEK Thermal Power Plants “Pridneprovskaya”, “Krivorozhskaya”, and “Luganskaya” operate using the anthracite coals (the others use «Г» (G) rank of coal). Therefore, the absence of possibility to remove coal from that area creates problems in the Thermal Power Plants operations.

“When forecasting in July – August 2014 we started warning and giving a notice that the country would encounter the critical and cute deficiency of coal and enter a winter season unprepared. If the needed decisions are not made at the state level we will encounter the critical and cute deficiency of power and so the power cut is inevitable. Currently the stock of anthracite coal at Power Stations on the average is available for three days. If irregularities with power supply are happened then the stations can stop, and neither power nor warm is available including our Dnepropetrovsk region.”