Norway's last Arctic miners struggle with coal mine's end

ADVENTDALEN, Norway (AP) — Kneeling by his crew as they drilled steel bolts into the low roof of a tunnel miles-deep into an Arctic mountain, Geir Strand reflected on the impact of their coal mine’s impending closure.

“It’s true coal is polluting, but … they should have a solution before they close us down,” Strand said inside Gruve 7, the last mine Norway is operating in the remote Svalbard archipelago.

It’s scheduled to be shut down in two years, cutting carbon dioxide emissions in this fragile, rapidly changing environment, but also erasing the identity of a century-old mining community that fills many with deep pride even as the primary activities shift to science and tourism.

“We have to think what we’re going to do,” Strand, a 19-year mining veteran, told two Associated Press journalists as his headlamp spotlighted black dust and the miners’ breath in the just-below-freezing tunnel. “(Mining) is meaningful. You know the task you have is very precise. The goal is to get out coal, and get out yourself and all your crew, safe and healthy.”

After the main village of Longyearbyen, 16 kilometers (10 miles) away, announced it would switch its only energy plant from coal-fired to diesel this year, and later to greener alternatives, mining company Store Norske decided it would close its last mine in Svalbard. The date was then postponed to 2025 because of the energy crisis precipitated by the war in Ukraine.