Mexican coal miners face hazardous conditions

Lima, Peru — Almost a year after Mexico’s worst mining disaster in four decades, investigators are still trying to recover the 64 missing bodies of the miners killed in the Pasta de Conchos coal pit explosion, at best recently discovering a pair of safety harnesses worn by a dead worker. Only one corpse has so far been found under tonnes of rock and amid toxic methane gas deep underground — a reminder of the risks in a coal industry enjoying a new wave of expansion as Mexican and U.S. demand for steel and energy grows.

Mexico’s coal output jumped 8.5% to 7 million tonnes last year, outstripping the Mexican economy’s overall growth. The sector is set to grow at an even faster pace over the next five years, with coal output jumping 15% to 693,294 tonnes in June, the latest figures available. Mexican steelmaker Altos Hornos de Mexico (AHMSA-M) (AHMSA), which is based in Mexico’s only coal mining state, Coahuila, plans to spend US$315 million to open new coal pits over the next three years, part of an US$827-million project to increase its liquid steel production by 40% to 4.6 million tonnes a year.

Coahuila, which borders Texas, is estimated to have coal reserves for at least another century of production and demand is strong. Mexico City-based miner Grupo Mexico (GMBXF-O, GMEXICOB-M), which owns Pasta de Conchos, plans to build a 450-megawatt, coal-fired power plant to reduce its power costs at its copper and zinc mines. Carboelectrica Diamante, owned by Japan’s Mitsubishi, aims to build a 648-megawatt coal-fired plant in the Pacific state of Guerrero at a cost of $611 million.

Stark choice

Given the dangers of coal mining in Mexico, on announcing its plan in late September, AHMSA’s president Alonso Ancira was keen to stress the “community benefits” of its growth plans in a barren stretch of Mexico where locals face the stark choice of risking their lives in mines for low wages or slipping across the border to work in Texas illegally.

“We’ll be creating 16,000 direct and indirect jobs with this project but also showing that our desire is not just to grow industrially but to help our state of Coahuila,” Ancira said.

Few local people in Coahuila have much faith in mining companies, even if Mexico’s mining chamber insists that the perception of coal mining as primitive and precarious is a false one. Grupo Mexico asserts that the Pasta de Conchos pit passed government inspections days before its mining disaster last February. But more than 1,300 people have died in gas explosions at coal mines in Coahuila since the late 1800s, according to local historian Ramiro Flores.

In the impoverished town of Palau in Coahuila, where locals earn US$60 a week in the coal mines, a statue of a miner commemorates a 1969 mining disaster that killed more than 150 people. In a recent report, Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission blamed the Mexican government for failing to uphold proper safety standards at coal mines including Pasta de Conchos, allowing high levels of coal dust and methane to go unchecked and failing to prevent workers who are keen to win productivity bonuses from mining even when gas levels exceed the safety threshold.

“Public servants have failed to guarantee workers’ health and life . . . breaking fundamental legal, hygienic and security rules that are enshrined in the constitution,” the report said.

Informal sector

Even as Grupo Mexico, AHMSA and other big mining firms spend millions of dollars on improving safety and installing state-of-the-art sensors that shut down coal mining machines whenever methane levels get too high, the lack of regulation in the sector continues and informal, small-scale coal mines, known as pocitos, or small holes, are proliferating.

With just a handful of shovels, a bucket, a steel cable and a working truck engine, poor, non-unionized Mexicans can produce around 1,200 tonnes of coal a month at a pocito, selling coal at $6 a tonne — making almost double what miners earn working at large, registered coal mines in Coahuila.

“It’s a way to make a good living and it’s probably no more dangerous than working as a truck driver on the highways,” said 27-year-old coal miner Antonio Silva, who aims to build a house for his wife and two children.

The 150 or so pocitos, which go down to about 60 ft., are rarely checked by government supervisors because of their short lifespan of a year or so and a lack of state personnel and resources.

“The truth is that there is little anyone can do when there are more than 150 mines and only two regional inspectors in Coahuila,” said a local businessman who declined to be named because he has operated several pocitos in the past. Much of the pocito production goes to provide coal-powered electricity in Mexico, as well as steel mills in the nearby industrial cities of Monclova and Monterrey, while the jobs that the informal mines generate help keep unemployment rates down, often prompting the federal government to turn a blind eye.

Nevertheless, accidents at pocitos are often fatal. Twelve miners died in 2001 in a methane explosion and 13 workers were killed in 2002 when a pocito flooded with water. A lack of ventilation systems and coal dust can cause severe lung illnesses and cancer. But small-scale mining is on the increase in many developing countries, employing up to 13 million people worldwide, according to the International Labour Organization, as high metals prices spur activity. In Mexico’s Coahuila, some farmers are eager to rent their land to pocito miners to supplement their incomes.

The Pasta de Conchos disaster has prompted some action. Lawmakers in Mexico City are looking at ways to allow coal-mining companies to extract and sell methane gas and avert future accidents. Mexico is trying to end a ban on mines siphoning off and selling methane. State energy company Petroleos de Mexico (Pemex) has a monopoly on producing and selling natural gas, but the country is not able to meet its energy needs and relies on gas imports from the United States. AHMSA says it wastes $200 million worth of methane a year from its mines, as 150 million cubic metres of methane seeps into the air from Mexican mines annually.

— Based in Lima, Peru, the author is a freelance writer specializing in mining issues.