Pike River Inquiry Phase 3: A disaster waiting to happen

At the inquiry yesterday, a Japanese mining expert has depicted the Pike mine as a disaster waiting to happen.

Masaoki Nishioka, photo Deidre Mussen/The Presss

Hydraulic mining expert Masaoki Nishioka left Pike River mine on October 20 last year believing that it could explode at any time. A month later, his fears were realised and 29 men were killed.

Nishioka – known as Oki to the West Coast mining fraternity, with whom he has worked in many mines over the years – had been recruited by Pike’s then general manager Peter Whittall in July 2010 to assist with commissioning the mine. His primary task was to install and commission the company’s hydraulic mining system, which Pike planned to use to extract 80% of its coal. Nishioka has decades of experience in hydraulic mining, both in other West Coast mines and in Japan and Canada.

At the time of his arrival at Pike, the company was already severely behind schedule with coal production. He was concerned to find that the mine’s ventilation system was inadequate and there was no second means of exit, and told the statutory mine manager, Doug White, that no-one should be sent underground until both issues were dealt with. He also considered that Pike’s hydraulic mining system was poorly designed. The area planned for hydro mining was situated in a dangerous location, and the company had selected the wrong equipment for the job.

The ventilation fan frequently tripped out – sometimes several times a day – and a new underground fan was being commissioned at the same time as the hydraulic mining system. Nishioka concluded the mine was unsafe because of the presence of high methane levels, inadequate ventilation, poor methane drainage from the coal, and the lack of a second means of egress. Furthermore, there was huge pressure on staff to get the hydraulic mining system operational and producing coal for the cash-starved company.

Because hydraulic mining carves large volumes of coal from the face, it liberates high levels of methane. Nishioka said he found it difficult when operating the new system to keep methane levels below the explosive level of 5%. To achieve lower levels, he would reduce the rate of coal-cutting, but this attracted a “hard time” from White and mine planning engineer Greg Borichevsky, who told him to get more coal out.

In early September 2010, the pressure to produce coal increased massively when Whittall introduced a production bonus for all Pike staffers. If hydraulic mining was underway by 24 September and producing a targetted volume of coal, the men would get a $10,000 bonus. After this, Nishioka says he was under pressure from all the miners to get the system going as quickly as possible.

“I did this reluctantly before a robust main ventilation system and second egress were ready,” he told the commission. Although he had earlier warned White not to send men into the mine, he continued to work underground himself because he felt he had little choice. Having accepted work at Pike, he had to “do something… I cannot stay in the office sitting back on the chair, and everybody was coming to me [saying] when we can produce coal, and I was getting, you know, that sort of pressure every day.” He wasn’t able to stop others from working underground, even though he felt conditions were dangerous.

There was no obvious management process whereby the decision was made to begin production using the hydraulic mining, and he saw no evidence of strong leadership. “Mine management did not understand the magnitude of the required modifications that were required.” Before he left the site for the last time on October 20, Nishioka warned several staff, including middle managers Pieter van Rooyen and Terry Moynihan, that the mine could explode at any time.

Although Pike appears to have ignored Nishioka’s warnings about safety, it was more than happy over the years to use his good name on company documentation. The commission heard yesterday that in a June 2000 pre-feasibility study, New Zealand Oil and Gas – the company that promoted the Pike coal project – listed him as a “key member” of a study team, even though he had merely answered some questions about hydraulic mining via email.

In 2005 he was listed as a hydro-mining consultant on the project, despite having only provided some cost estimates. Nishioka also told the commission that in 1993 his former employer, Mitsui Mining, had looked at the Pike coal field and concluded it could yield only 5-6 million tonnes of coking coal – not enough to justify the huge capital costs involved in drilling a tunnel into the coal seam and developing the mine in difficult mountainous country.

Fourteen years later, prospective shareholders in Pike’s initial public offering were told that it would achieve production of 17.6 million tonnes. “Way too much,” remarked Nishioka, when asked to comment to the commission on that estimate. Indeed, by the time Pike blew up, it had managed to extract and sell a mere 42,000 tonnes of coal. No-one knows better than the families of the Pike 29 what the true cost of that tiny volume of coal has been.