Kiwiblog

Stuff reports:

 Pike River Coal has been sold to state-owned enterprise Solid Energy under a conditional agreement, receivers for the mine said today.

The receivers said they have reached agreement with Solid Energy New Zealand for the sale of the assets of Pike River Coal. …

”We, as the receivers, are pleased with this agreement as we consider it the best way forward for all parties. As part of the agreement, negotiations will continue with the Crown to establish a trust that will help oversee efforts to enter the main area of the mine and facilitate body recovery – if it is safe and technically feasible.

”In the meantime, work on the tunnel reclamation is continuing. We will provide further updates as appropriate,” Fisk added.

I suspect the families of the dead miners will be pleased with this sale, as Solid Energy has publicly committed to doing what it can to recover the bodies. The Government had said it would make recovery of the bodies a condition of transferring the mining licence, so this may be why other parties did not bid for the mine in the end.

From the Forest & Bird website:

Coal is the dirtiest fuel – burning coal is the single largest global source of greenhouse gases, which are causing climate change. Burning coal also causes air pollution which has a direct effect on people’s health.

As well as the carbon released when coal is burnt, trapped methane (another greenhouse gas) is also released when coal is mined. For example Pike River Coal’s planned coal mining over the next 20 years will release trapped methane equivalent to more than all the dairy cows on the West Coast.

Maybe Forest & Bird want to now use a different example.

Hayden Donnell in the NZ Herald reports:

State owned mining company Solid Energy has revealed it wants to buy the Pike River Coal mine, pay off its unsecured creditors and recover the bodies of 29 men still trapped inside. …

Solid Energy, which operates several West Coast mines including the nearby Spring Creek Coal Mine, today announced it was one of those looking to buy the rights to extract the $6 billion of coal still at Pike River through a mixture of opencast and underground mining.

Chief executive Don Elder said recovering the 29 bodies still inside the mine would be a priority in that proposal.

It was committed to addressing the “many challenges” of making the mine economically viable while respecting the wishes of the families of the dead, he said. …

“As a non-negotiable part of that, the wishes of the families have to be a priority in considering all options including potential recovery, if feasible, of the 29 miners’ bodies. The same applies to the unsecured creditors on the West Coast; any solution to invest in and work the mine needs to address that issue as a top priority.”

That’s possibly the best news the Coast has had, since the explosion.

Elder said the company’s plan would include opencasting parts of the mine.

Somehow I suspect the usual suspects won’t oppose this mine being opencasted.

Fresh from the PR triumph of attacking Sir Peter Jackson, the CTU continues its strategy of winning over the public by targeting Peter Whittall.

The Press reports:

Council of Trade Unions president Helen Kelly told a Canterbury Workers Educational Association function in Christchurch on Friday that Whittall should have apologised for the tragedy.

“He’s now been called a national hero, but he’s the CEO of that company and he hasn’t apologised,” she said.

“Even if the company did everything right, if it was me, I’d say: `I’m the employer. This has happened and I’m really sorry. I don’t know why, but I’m going to find out why’. But he hasn’t said that.”

Questions about what happened had not been asked, Kelly said.

“This is a very serious event. That mine was open for just over a year. There are 29 miners dead. We’ve got to be more mature about who we honour, how we think about things, what we demand. If that had been public Department of Conservation [land] we would have gone after them and said what had happened.

“But because it’s a company and because the CEO gets to sit next to the Prime Minister at the memorial service, the hard questions have not been asked.”

The CTU just don’t get it. Peter Whittall would not have insisted he be on the stage and one of the speakers at the memorial service. The PM would not have decided who the speakers are. I’m bet you that it was at the request of the miners families, that Whittall was on the stage as one of the speakers.

I’ve remarked on radio how unusual it is that the CEO of the mine where 29 people died has become a national hero. This must be very frustrating for the unions. But the reality is it is the way Whittall conducted himself that has won people over.

But he would know, that admiration for his post-explosion performance, will not protect him if it transpires that Pike River Coal has some culpability for what happened. Admiration for fronting up does not remove accountability and responsibility.

But this is why we have a Royal Commission – to establish the facts. I think it is unwise for various unions to already be trying to denigrate Whittall.

They have not been alone there. Cindy Baxter of Greenpeace facebooked soon after the tragedy a list of Pike River Directors, labelling them “the people who developed the mine that just killed 29 people”. An extra-ordinary rush to judgement.

We also had a Labour MP on day one of the explosion tweet about how the company must be asked the hard questions to prevent a cover-up and how the unions are key to this. This was before we even knew if anyone was dead.

Engineering, Printing and Manufacturing Union (EPMU) national secretary Andrew Little acknowledged Whittall had not sought hero status, but said failures on the part of mine managers or “the guys underground” could have caused the disaster.

“We need to reserve judgment until we get credible answers to questions about why it all happened.

“The company has been treated as somewhat heroic and in a way I think it’s somewhat undeserving.”

Little is correct in saying we need to reserve judgement. My admiration for Whittall’s response to the explosion in no way means that Pike River Coal should not be held accountable if the facts warrant it.

I think Andrew is wrong though in saying the company has been treated as somewhat heroic. Whittall has been, but he is not the company. People have empathised with the fact he knew every single miner killed – in fact had employed them all, and so obviously grieved for them.

In yesterday’s HoS, Matt McCarten had the same theme:

under his watch, 29 men were killed and still lie entombed. Family members and friends of the dead have been robbed of a loved one. Many other workers, as a result of the explosion, will lose their livelihoods.

Unbelievably, the chief executive of this company becomes a media darling.

He did not become a “media darling” for what happened. He gained respect because he did what so many people say they want CEOs to do – he fronted up constantly, he did not spin, he did not lie, he told the truth. He was real.

If you have followed the media coverage you’d think the whole tragedy was just an unavoidable accident.

On the contrary, I think no such thing.

NZPA report:

The miners’ union says Pike River Coal is insisting that its lawyers sit in on official police and Department of Labour investigation interviews into the mine tragedy which claimed 29 lives.

The union said that was potentially “contaminating” the process.

However, Pike River said today it was only making employees – many of whom had no prior contact with the police – aware of their legal rights.

The Engineering, Printing and Manufacturing Union, which represents miners, said today the company’s stance was causing major conflict.

“Management is insisting on the right of company lawyers to sit in on interviews. Their lawyers are sitting in on interviews with the Department of Labour and police,” general secretary Andrew Little said.

However, Pike River Coal chairman John Dow said it was up to individual employees whether lawyers sat in on the interviews.

The company was only trying to ensure its staff got the appropriate advice on their rights, and how the process worked.

“We are trying to find out what happened, our only interest is getting to the bottom of it – what caused the explosion and making sure it won’t happen again.

“We’ve said to our employees that if they are not happy having lawyers in the room, that’s fine.”

So the EPMU is arguing that the employees should have no choice in whether or not a lawyer is present for their interviews.

A Department of Labour (DOL) spokesman said it was the employee’s choice to decide whether company lawyers or other representatives attended on DOL interviews.

“We are informing employees that they have this choice.”

As it should be.