One Man Goes Missing After the Incident at the ArcelorMittal Temirtau Mine

On January 13 a coal and gas outburst occurred at the Lenin mine of ArcelorMittal Temirtau (AMT) in Central Kazakhstan. All but one of the miners were able to leave the dangerous mine, according to the company.

After the incident, the company immediately published a press release where it announced that the rescue operation is already underway. Emergency response service from Karaganda was sent to the site where it is working now. The service said that the situation with the gas outburst has improved.

As the AMT company noted, 137 workers were on-site when the incident had occurred; 136 of them left the mine safely.

According to Karaganda region akimat (local authorities), the emergency service is trying to find the lost man. To investigate the incident, the Committee for Industrial Safety under the Ministry of Emergencies agreed to form a joint commission with local labor inspection, coal miner labor union organization and mine officials. The ministry said it will announce the results of the rescue operation later.

The ArcelorMittal Temirtau possesses eight mines in Karaganda coal-basin. According to reports of ArcelorMittal B.V., the parent company of the AMT, in 2019 the company produced 3.5 million tons of coal. About three million tons were consumed by the AMT steel plant itself and the rest was sold to Ukraine, as well as customers in Russia and China. The company’s revenue from the coal concentrate last year was 47.4 billion tenge or about $113 million.

Earlier, state agencies have criticized the work of the AMT. Thus Karaganda region environmental service wants the AMT to shut down its mine called Tentekskaya because of some violations. The mine illegally discharged sewage waters into a local water basin that serves as an evaporation pond.