Mining
As of May 2007, Estonia has been actively engaged in exploiting oil shale on a significant scale and accounts for 70% of the world's processed oil shale, although China is likely to overtake Estonian production in the near future. In 2005, Estonia mined 14.8 million tonnes of oil shale. During the same period, mining permits were issued for almost 24 million tonnes, with applications for mining an additional 26 million tonnes. Estonia has adopted the "National Development Plan for the Use of Oil Shale 2008-2015", which limits the annual mining of oil shale to 20 million tonnes. Companies involved in oil shale mining are Eesti Põlevkivi, Viru Keemia Grupp, Kiviõli Keemiatööstus and Kunda Nordic Cement.
As of 2007, six oil shale underground mines and open-cast mines were in operation and one mine was in preparation phase in Estonia. The historical ratio of underground mining to open-cast mining is approximately fifty-fifty, although it is tending to move away from open-cast production as bed depths increase.
The Aidu and Narva opencast mines, operated by Eesti Põlevkivi, uses surface mining technology of stripping with relatively big bucket (10–35 cubic meters) excavators. Both the overburden and the bed are at first broken up by blasting. Stripping is done with smaller excavators in opencasts with thin overburden using front end loaders and hydraulic excavators. The Aidu opencast mine uses bulk extraction of all beds, while the Narva opencast mine and the Põhja-Kiviõli opencast mine, operated by Kiviõli keemiatööstus, use highly selective extraction in three layers of seams. Exhausted open-cast areas are gradually being regenerated through land recultivation and reforestation.
Underground mines exploit room and pillar method. Longwall mining, used earlier, was abandoned in 1990s. The largest oil shale mine in the world is the Estonia Mine, opened in 1972. It is operated by Eesti Energia Kaevandused.
Read more about this topic: Oil Shale In Estonia
Famous quotes containing the word mining:
“In strict science, all persons underlie the same condition of an infinite remoteness. Shall we fear to cool our love by mining for the metaphysical foundation of this elysian temple? Shall I not be as real as the things I see? If I am, I shall not fear to know them for what they are.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“For every nineteenth-century middle-class family that protected its wife and child within the family circle, there was an Irish or a German girl scrubbing floors in that home, a Welsh boy mining coal to keep the home-baked goodies warm, a black girl doing the family laundry, a black mother and child picking cotton to be made into clothes for the family, and a Jewish or an Italian daughter in a sweatshop making “ladies” dresses or artificial flowers for the family to purchase.”
—Stephanie Coontz (20th century)
“Any relation to the land, the habit of tilling it, or mining it, or even hunting on it, generates the feeling of patriotism. He who keeps shop on it, or he who merely uses it as a support to his desk and ledger, or to his manufactory, values it less.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)