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Soviet Union [USSR] Coal
For about 150 years, coal was the dominant fuel in Russian and
later in Soviet industry, and many industrial centers were located
near coal deposits. In the 1960s, oil and gas replaced coal as the
dominant fuel when plentiful, accessible supplies of these fuels
were discovered. But coal remained an important energy source much
for of Soviet industry. Total coal reserves, estimated in 1983 at
6.8 trillion tons, were the largest in the world, and since 1980
expanded coal production has been a standard goal of industrial
planners. In the mid-1980s, approximately 40 percent of coal went
to power-plant boiler units (steam coal) and 20 percent to
metallurgy (coking coal). The rest went for export, to other
industries, and to households. Shaft mines provided 60 percent of
total production, surface mines the remainder.
Historically, the most important coal region has been the
Donbass, on which the metallurgical industry was centered because
of the cheap, plentiful coking coal it offered. Other traditional
coking-coal centers were the Kuzbass in western Siberia and the
Karaganda Basin in the northern Kazakh Republic. As deeper
excavation and reclamation operations raised the cost of Donbass
coal, other centers challenged its position as chief producer of
coking coal. The second largest coal center in the European sector
of the Soviet Union was the Pechora Basin, where shaft mines were
less deep and labor productivity much higher than in the Donbass.
In most of the European sector, shaft mines had to be dug deeper,
seams were growing thinner, and methane concentration was higher.
Despite these conditions, in the late 1980s shaft mines were still
providing 75 percent of high-quality coking coal.
The highest cost factor in Soviet coal production was
transportation. Even when extraction was very expensive, regions
such as the Donbass and the Moscow Basin remained practical because
they were so close to the metallurgical centers they served.
Conversely, Kuzbass coal extraction was cheap, but its high-quality
coking coal had to be transported long distances to industrial
centers (for example, 2,200 kilometers to the Magnitogorsk
metallurgical center). Transport distance also required that new
thermoelectric plants be located near the coal and water resources
that fueled their steam boilers. In the late 1980s, Soviet coal
experts called for gradually less reliance on the Donbass and
increased emphasis on the Kuzbass. Increased investment at the
Donbass had failed to maintain production levels, indicating the
necessity of this step. But rail transport costs from the Kuzbass
and Siberia would rise steeply with added volume. Experimental
slurry lines were opened in 1988 to provide possible alternative
long-distance coal transport to the west.
Future growth in coal production must come from east of the
Urals, where an estimated 75 percent of the country's reserves lie.
Most Siberian coal can be strip-mined, making production costs much
lower and labor productivity much higher than shaft mining. Between
1977 and 1983, production in the Soviet Union's European basins
fell by 32 million tons annually, and by the 1970s rail movement of
coal westward across the Urals had doubled. To minimize
transportation costs, major new power stations were built in the
Kansko-Achinsk and Ekibastuz coal basins, whose low-quality brown
coal, a cheap fuel, breaks down rapidly if transported over long
distances. Coal from those mines required extensive processing
before being burned in thermoelectric plants. By the year 2000,
Kansko-Achinsk may be the most productive Soviet coal basin, with
a planned yield of 400 million tons per year. The largest Soviet
strip mine, Bogatyr, is located at Ekibastuz.
In the mid-1980s, low coal quality was still a major problem
because efficient processing equipment was scarce. Huge reserves
remained untapped in Siberia because of remoteness and low quality,
but in the 1980s the South Yakut Basin in eastern Siberia was being
developed with Japanese technical aid.
Data as of May 1989
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