Arctikugol Trust

Arctikugol Trust
Type	State owned
Founded	1932
Headquarters	Barentsburg, Svalbard, Norway
Area served	Svalbard, Norway
Industry	Mining
Products	Coal
Parent	Government of Russia

The mines at Barentsburg seen from the docks.

Arcticugol Trust (Russian: Арктикуголь, translates Arctic Coal) is a Russian state owned coal mining company that operates at Barentsburg on Svalbard, Norway. Though coal is still mined, it is not exported, and the company is heavily subsidised by the Government of Russia. The company formerly also operated the coal mine at Pyramiden, also on Svalbard.

History

The company bought the mines at Pyramiden in 1927, and started mining operations at Barentsburg in 1932. This was in part to insure a Russian presence on the archipilango, since the Svalbard Treaty of 1920 insured that all countries to sign the treaty were given equaly rights to natural resource exploitation. In 1998 the company closed the mine at Pyramiden, and settlement became a ghost town.

On October 17, 2006 Norwegian inspectors detected an underground, smoldering fire in Barentsburg, prompting fears that an open fire might break out^[1], which would have forced the evacuation of all of Barentsburg for an indefinite period of time, and also caused unknown environmental problems for the entire archipelago. As of November 3, the fire seems to be contained, but there are lingering concerns about the mining company, Arktikugol Trust's lack of equipment to handle the problem^[2].

References

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