The Vietnam National Coal Mineral Industries Group (Vinacomin) assigned tasks to Khe Cham Coal Company and Vinacomin Industry Investment Consulting Joint Stock Company to build the Khe Cham III investment and exploitation project. In 2006, this project was officially launched with two coal wells called Thinh Vuong and An Khang with length of 1.6km and depth of -300m each and coal mining capacity of 2.5 million tonnes per year.

According to Nguyen Xuan Quat party committee secretary of Khe Cham Coal Company, the company faced many hard situations to put this coalmine into operation. After one year since the project was launched, the two coal wells were affected by water pits of a nearby open-cast coal exploiter and had to halt for about six months to handle the problem. In addition, the underground galleries were built on the Bac Huy and FL geological faults with soft rocks and soil in the area which made it difficult to be constructed exactly to the initial technical designs. Then the company had to pump and press cement mortar to reinforce the rocks and soil and it took five years to reach the depth of -300 meter.

Nguyen Xuan Quat added that after setting the additional exploratory drilling project, production of coal beds had a big change compared with initial estimations. According to initial estimations, the design of the project was in east-west direction with length from 1.6 to 2km. To reach the designed capacity it only has to mobilize two mechanized pits with coal production of 1.2 million tonnes and 600,000 tonnnes respectively. However, after the additional exploratory drilling, to ensure safe exploitation the pits had to shift to exploitation in south-north direction and length was cut to 400-600m. The number of mobilized pits then rose to eight to meet coal mining capacity of 2.5 million tonnes per year.

The ceremony to mark the first tonne of coal exploited at the Khe Cham coalmine

In particular, according to updated geology of the company, to ensure safety of the operation, it had to shift from mechanized coal digging technology at average speed from 100-150m a month to manual digging at average speed only 35-40m a month. Nguyen Xuan Quat said “These really were hardships out of imagination that we should not have overcome without patience and qualifications.”

Before the actual difficulties in construction, Khe Cham Coal Company in collaboration with Vinacomin Industry Investment Consulting Joint Stock Company to timely update and report the situation to the board and leaders of the group. With close instructions from the group, the company made timely changes and supplementations to the designs and construction methods so as not to affect the progress of the project. Until October 2013, the Khe Cham III coalmine officially exploited the first tonne of coal.

Nguyen Xuan Quat said the company is pushing to open the second coal pit (14-5-IE), scheduled to become operational this August and reach mining capacity of 250,000-290,000 tonnes per year./.

Ven.vn