Mexico's makeshift coal pits try to boost output

By Mica Rosenberg

NUEVA ROSITA, Mexico (Reuters) - A steel bucket holding two men lowers into a pit, suspended on a cable wound by an old truck engine.

At a depth of about 150 feet, the men get out of the bucket and into a tunnel just wide enough for a few men and a couple of wheelbarrows, pitch black save for the lamps on the men's heads, to mine coal with handheld jackhammers.

Mexicans have been mining "pozitos," or little holes, like this one in the town of Nueva Rosita in much the same way for more than a century. Now, with energy prices sky high and Mexico's electricity needs surging, these rudimentary and dangerous mines are working at full capacity.

Rene Zertuche, the supervisor of the pozito in northern Mexico's Coahuila state, watches as a worker perched on a bolted-down car seat facing the pit pulls a lever to lift a bucket of coal.

After receiving orders over a two-way radio rigged up to an old telephone, the worker uses the same bucket to haul up two men, both shirtless, covered in soot and drenched with underground water and sweat from the sweltering temperatures.

Up to 14 percent of Mexico's electricity comes from coal, with the rest powered by more expensive fuel oil, natural gas and hydroelectric power. At least four more coal-fired plants are in the works and the state electricity commission is considering converting some oil-fired plants to coal.

The electricity industry burns some 16 million tonnes of coal a year, the vast majority of it from big coal mines. The pozitos supply only a small fraction of that, but with demand rising pozitos are trying to extract as much coal as they can.

Rising energy and commodity prices have boosted informal and dangerous mining techniques in many poor countries around the world, from Honduras to Ghana.

In traditional mining states like Coahuila, there are few options: risk your life in the mine or slip across the border into Texas to work illegally.

Prices of imports are soaring. Coal reached almost $200 per tonne on the European Energy Exchange in August, while the going price for a tonne of coal in Coahuila is $64 (651.38 pesos), one reason the Mexican government is clamoring for more.

LIFE THREATENING

While more mining means more work and money for people in the rich coal belt of Coahuila, which is nestled below the U.S. state of Texas, it also means more injuries and more deaths.

Three people died in accidents at pozitos last year and miners say its rare a year goes by without fatalities.

"You die down below when gas can't escape and there's an explosion, there are never any survivors then. Or rocks can fall and kill you, or crush your arm or leg," said Jacobo Rodriguez, 39, who has worked in Coahuila's pozos since he was 15 years old.

A methane explosion in 2001 and then a flood in 2002 left 25 pozito miners dead, forcing the government to tighten safety controls.