Editor’s Note: As three investigation teams continue their probe into the nation's worst mining disaster in four decades, editorial staff members from The Register-Herald and Bluefield Daily Telegraph, along with the executive editor for Community Newspaper Holdings Inc. (our parent company), have been working for the last three months to develop stories and photographs that will provide our readers with a deeper look into the Upper Big Branch tragedy. We continue to feature that work in our newspaper today. It should also be noted that while Massey Energy did respond in writing to written questions that we posed to them, and those responses do appear in one of these stories, numerous verbal and written requests made to Massey officials to allow us to interview Massey CEO Don Blankenship went unanswered.
A buildup of explosive methane gas gets the blame for the explosion at Massey Energy’s Upper Big Branch Mine, though the exact cause is still unknown.
For the company’s retired president, that suspicion is reason enough to improve gas readings in dark places where conditions can rapidly change, posing a potentially deadly hazard.
“The fact that it did occur is, in my belief, good reason for us to look for a solution to the problem of methane gas collecting underground,” said E. Morgan Massey, 83, in a recent telephone interview from his Florida home.
Massey says he may have a better way. He envisions the day when a fire boss, who now takes gas readings at the mine’s face, will look at a computer monitor for real-time information on methane levels inside and outside the mine. A display might also show barometric pressure, air velocity and seismic activity.
Massey once shoveled coal himself, shoulder to shoulder with the miners who worked for him at A.T. Massey Coal. He steered his father’s company into the mining business in the late 1940s.
An entire career has since passed. Massey retired as the company’s president in 1991. He remained on the board of directors before retiring that post two years later.
Massey said the April explosion in Montcoal that killed 29 miners troubles him deeply. He supports Don Blankenship, who succeeded him as Massey Energy’s president. Blankenship, he said, has “endorsed the commitment to mine safety all along.”
But all mines could benefit from a better approach to monitoring gas, he said.
Methane is naturally released when coal is extracted from a mine. Laws requires coal operators to measure levels at a mine’s face, or the area where heavy equipment breaks coal off an underground seam.
Chinese coal operators also measure methane levels at the returns – where a mine’s ventilation system expels air. That provides operators with a more complete picture of what’s happening inside a mine, said Massey.
An even more detailed view would include the barometric pressure outside a mine, since a rapid pressure is known to release gas from a coal seam.
“We could also measure data on seismic activity, whether it is from an earthquake, a mine bump or anything else,” said Massey.
Massey is an officer of Evan Energy, a Richmond, Va., exploration company that has worked with Chinese coal operators to address methane problems.
“We were surprised when we learned that the Chinese measured methane at the returns,” he said, “but after what happened here in April, I started thinking about it a lot more.”
Massey has commissioned research at the Virginia Tech College of Engineering, Mining & Minerals to determine what sorts of readings to take and where. He did not disclose the cost of the study.
Kray Luxbacher, an assistant professor of mining engineering, said the work should be completed within six months.
“We’ll develop a plan and present it to coal operators, federal and state mining officials and develop a pilot project,” she said.
— Contact Bill Archer at barcher@bdtonline.com
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