History, Outlook and Technical Problems of Coal Mining in Indonesia

Abstract

Indonesia produced 306 Mt of salable coal in 2010 almost 100% by surface mining. Rapid increase in production by surface mining, however, has brought strong concerns of sustainable supply ability of coal with current quality level in future. Thus, development of underground mining has been recognized to be important by the government and the coal industry in Indonesia.Since 1980’s until 1995, only 3 underground mines had been operated, and currently, there are only two operating underground coal mines with small scale. However, several underground projects with fully mechanized mining system have recently started pre development work, such as exploration, feasibility study and so on. The author expects that development of underground mines with bigger production scale would become active within a few years.On the other hand, the underground mining condition in Indonesia is more difficult than it in other countries. This paper describes the history and outlook of underground coal mining in Indonesia from technical points of view, and then discusses the technical problems for future development of underground mining in Indonesia.