Oltenia Energy Complex
{{#badges: Navbar-Global Coal Mine Tracker}} The Oltenia Energy Complex comprises power plants and mines. The mines are located in Gorj, Vâlcea and Mehedinţi, Romania.
Contents
Location
The photo below shows the area of the Rovinari mine in Gorj county, Romania.
Background
The company has its material base in Gorj, Vâlcea and Mehedinţi counties with total reserves of 2 billion tonnes of coal. The annual production is around 35 million tonnes of lignite and 4 million tonnes of anthracite and the total number of employees is approximately 9,000.
Approximately 85% of the total production comes from Gorj County, especially in the north of the county where coal is extracted near Motru and Rovinari.
The main beneficiaries of the coal extracted here are the large Romanian power complexes Rovinari Power Station with a capacity of 1,720 MW, Turceni Power Station with a capacity of 2,310 MW and Craiova Power Station with a capacity of 615 MW thus making Gorj County the biggest power producer in Romania with around 36% of the whole energy produced in the country.
The company owns and operates six coal mines in Gorj, Mehedinţi and Vâlcea counties:
| Rank | Mine | County | Reserves (million tonnes) | Production (million tonnes) |
| 1 | Berbeşti | Vâlcea | 67 | 2.5 |
| 2 | Husnicioara | Mehedinţi | 67 | 3.1 |
| 3 | Jilţ | Gorj | 285.8 | 7 |
| 4 | Motru | Gorj | 108 | 6.6 |
| 5 | Roşia – Peşteana | Gorj | 112 | 7.2 |
| 6 | Rovinari | Gorj | 180 | 8 |
In 2019, Rosiuta mine in Motru, in Gorj county was transferred to Oltenia's ownership as well.[1] The mine was first opened in 1983 and has a capacity of about 3 million tons per year.[2] In 2019, the government approved the final procedure for reopening Roșiuța mine.[3] The mine employed 14,000 employees, but in October 2019, the Bucharest Court of Appeal canceled the environmental authorization of the Roșiuța mine.[4]
Expansions
Several of these mines have been considered for expansion. In 2012, almost one hundred permits were issued to Oltenia Energy Complex (OEC) with regard to several mines, allowing the company to cut down hectares of forest to make way for coal mines. The permits were issued illegally, however, as Bankwatch Romania proved in court over the past six years. After many lawsuits and complaints to the relevant authorities, a sign of progress came this summer when the Romanian Ministry for Environment informed criminal investigation bodies about this situation. The slow evolution of the lawsuits allowed some areas to be deforested before the trials were finished, as the decisions were not suspended. Someone may be held accountable for the illegal permits that led to the destruction of hundreds of hectares of forest. Six years after the local authorities failed to protect the environment, a criminal investigation began. This law was changed in the meantime, however, enabling large-scale deforestation for projects of ‘public interest’ by removing the mandatory government decisions.[5]
January 2012 – September 2013: TIFH Râmnicu Vâlcea issues over 100 deforestation decisions for Roșia, Rovinari, Jilț Nord, Jilt Sud and other mines.
December 2015: Deforestation decisions for Roșia mine are definitively annulled
March 2017: Deforestation decisions for Jilt Sud mine definitively annulled
December 2017: The decisions for Jilț Nord are annulled by a court
March 2018: Deforestation decisions for Rovinari mine are definitively annulled[5]
October 2019: Court blocks Rosia mine expansion
Rovinari
This is the largest open-pit mine in Romania. Rovinari has four open pits, Tismana I, Tismana II, Gârla - Rovinari Est and Pinoasa, and employs approximately 3000 workers.[6] The Romanian Government has been negotiating for several years, since 2012, with the Chinese Government to build a new 600 MW unit at the lignite power plant in Rovinari, Gorj County. The lignite would be supplied from the nearby open-pit mines – Tismana I and II, Rosia, Pinoasa, all owned by the same Oltenia Energy Complex – which would require a 700 ha expansion of production capacity. Extending these mines would mean clearing huge land areas, in most cases accompanied by massive deforestation. As noted above, since 2012, Bankwatch Romania has filed a series of complaints in court, requesting the annulment of illegally issued deforestation permits and mine expansion permits that did not assess impacts on the environment. Almost all the actions have been successful in court. After an infringement procedure was initiated by the European Commission, all the expansions were reassessed. However, the new permits fail to evaluate the cumulative impact of the mines, and are therefore again the subject of Bankwatch Romania court action, one of them being currently suspended. To date (May 2018) no environmental impact assessment procedure has been launched.[7]
Rosia
The mine has three open pits Roșia, Peșteana Nord, Peșteana Sud-Urdar and around 2,900 workers.[8] The company wanted to expand Rosia's 1,450-hectare coal mine by a further 280 hectares, 235 of which are currently covered by forest which would have had to be cut down. The NGO BankWatch Romania challenged the expansion in court because the expansion would make it harder for the country to meet its coal phaseout targets. During the two-year legal battle, Bankwatch argued that the expansion had initially been granted without properly consulting locals and that the environmental impact of such an expansion had not been assessed. BankWatch added that the expanded mine would pollute the area, including underground water, and that endangered species would also be negatively impacted. The court blocked the expansion.[9]
Jilt
Jilt is one of the largest open-pit mines in Romania. The mine has two open pits, Jilț Sud, Jilț Nord, and around 2,400 workers.[10] In 2015, the residents of Runcurel, a village in Romania’s south west, were given 30 days to vacate their homes in exchange for 1 euro per square meter of land to accommodate the Jilt Nord mine expansion. Backed by a Romanian government executive decree dated Dec. 9, the mine was declared a project of national importance and earlier attempts to reach a deal with villagers were abandoned. The villagers say no compensation was offered for homes, orchards, crops or other assets linked to the land and lodged court action against the company.
On March 18, 2016 villagers from Runcurel, with the help of Bankwatch and Greenpeace, filed a case to sue the government in a bid to have the decision to reclaim their land revoked. The court documents state the environmental permit issued for the mine’s expansion is linked to a formal strategy to relocate the villagers to nearby Telesti at OEC expense, which remains unimplemented. Additionally, the document states the government’s executive decree contradicts Romania’s national energy strategy which seeks to reduce energy production from coal and discourages new energy projects with significant socio-cultural impacts.[11]
As stated above, the deforestation permits allowing the Jilt Sud expansion were annulled in 2017. However, in 2019, the government approved the final procedure for extending the perimeter of the Jilț Sud mine, which already opened this year.[3]
Project Details
- Owner: National Company of Lignite Oltenia (Romanian: Societatea Naţională a Lignitului Oltenia - SNLO)
- Parent Company:
- Location: Gorj, Mehedinţi and Vâlcea counties, Romania
- GPS coordinates: 44.8063604,23.5016435 (approximate)
- Mine status: Operating
- Start year: 1997
- Mineable reserves: 2 billion tonnes
- Coal type: lignite
- Mine size:
- Mine type: Surface
- Production: 39 million tonnes per year
- Additional proposed production:
- Equipment: Open pit mining
- Number of employees: approximately 9000
Rovinari Expansion Details
- Status: Cancelled
- Production Capacity:
- Mine expansion size: 700 ha
- Start Year:
- Source of Financing:
Rosia Expansion Details
- Status: Shelved
- Production Capacity:
- Mine expansion size: 280 hectares
- Start Year: 2019
- Source of Financing:
Jilt Sud Expansion Details
- Status: Operating
- Production Capacity:
- Mine expansion size:
- Start Year: 2019
- Source of Financing:
Jilt Nord Expansion Details
- Status: Proposed
- Production Capacity:
- Mine expansion size:
- Start Year:
- Source of Financing:
Articles and resources
References
- ↑ EC Oltenia to open a new lignite mine, Balkan Energy, July 19, 2019.
- ↑ THE IMPACT ON RESIDENTS HEALTH NEAR THE COAL DEPOSIT OF ROŞIUŢA COAL PIT, EBSCO, 2015.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 The government cuts forests and expropriates to open three lignite mines from Ceausescu's time, Radio Free Europe, July 18, 2019.
- ↑ THE PREPARATION OF ROMANIA FOR THE WINTER: 'The environmental authorization of the Roşiuța quarry, which provides coal for the CEO, CANCELLATED, CEO website, October 29, 2019.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 Six years later, a criminal investigation into illegal environment permits finally begins in Romania, Bankwatch Network, accessed October 2019.
- ↑ Rovinari Coal Mine, Wikipedia, last edited September 24, 2019.
- ↑ Rovinari unit 7, Romania, BankWatch Network, accessed October 2019.
- ↑ Roșia – Peșteana Coal Mine, Wikipedia, last edited September 24, 2019.
- ↑ Court blocks expansion of Romania's biggest coal mine, euronews, October 23, 2019.
- ↑ Jilț Coal Mine, Wikipedia, last edited October 1, 2019.
- ↑ Swallowed by a coal mine: the village that disappeared, Reuters, May 17, 2016.
Related SourceWatch articles
External resources
External articles
Wikipedia also has an article on the Oltenia Energy Complex (National Company of Lignite Oltenia). This article may use content from the Wikipedia article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License].
