Semirara says mine operations expected to resume in April

Business MirrorPublished on Wednesday, 20 March 2013 18:34

SEMIRARA Mining Corp. expects to resume operations at its Panian coal mine in Antique by next month, one of its top officials said on Wednesday.

“We’ve been given the go-signal to restrip the mine and we expect [to resume operations]...somewhere between the end of the month or early April,” Isidro A. Consunji, vice chairman and chief executive officer at Semirara, told Mornings@ANC.

A landslide incident at the western portion of the Panian coal mine in February left five workers dead and another five missing. Operations have been halted since then.

The Energy department earlier this month has already given Semirara permission to commence preparatory activities at the northern portion of the mine. However, the local agency said it will first review safety measures being implemented before allowing Semirara to resume coal-mining activities.

“It’s pretty unfortunate but the accident was caused by a slippage because of a very saturate high wall. But we’re adopting some mitigating measures to make sure it doesn’t happen again,” Consunji stressed.

“We’re working together with the Department of Energy to approve our safety measures,” he added.

Still, losses from the shuttered coal mine and the current low prices of coal in the market are not expected to hurt the bottom line of DMCI Holdings Inc., the firm’s parent company.

Consunji, who is DMCI president and chief executive officer, said the negative impact of the coal business on the holding firm’s income will be offset by gains in the power segment.

“Rehabilitation of Calaca 1 and Calaca 2 [power plants] are both finished...so you expect much better yield on power income this year compared to last year,” Consunji said.

“So we’ll probably end up better this year compared to last year or probably the same, offsetting the negative impact of coal,” he continued.

Aside from coal and power, DMCI is involved in construction, real estate, water, nickel and toll-road businesses.   source

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Written by ABS-CBNnews.com