Bulqize Mine risking “burial”

“With the new works for taking the other reserves, the mine risks to be closed”, Bello declared.

The specialists have raised this concern since the first years of the ‘90s. In 2001, when DARFO signed the concessionary agreement, one of the conditions was to open a new gallery that would deepen the mine and increase its longevity.

“With the opening of this new gallery, the reserves would rise with 5 million tons, which means that the mine would have 30 more years of longevity.”

But Pajtim Bello says that the new gallery has not been opened, because DARFO and later ACR failed to make the investments as agreed in 2001. And yet, both companies have exploited the deep reserves through illegal methods. Through these methods they have taken some part of the underground chrome, but have made it impossible for exploiting the other reserves.

The Specialists now fear that the mining reserves could definitely bury under the rubble of a possible collapse.

Ing. Kola: Mine risking closure

The entire town of Bulqize has been swept by protests and a hunger strike for more than one month, even with sporadic violence.

The miners and their families demand higher payments, but also investments from the ACR Company, for being safer and having more technical conditions.

Engineer Jorgo Kola, who has spent 30 years of his life in this mine, supports the legal mineworkers’ strike, but he underlines that the basis of this strike should be the demand for having the ACR Company open four other levels in that mine. Engineer Kola says that the chrome in the 16th level would guarantee the miners job for one other year, while ACR should have started opening the levels 17, 18, 19 and 20 a long time ago.

“They are late. They should have opened it two or three years ago. In 2012 or 2013 there will be no space to use your tools for materials. There is no more”, Kola declared.

Studies made several years ago show that the Bulqize chrome mine has 20 other levels, but Engineer Kola thinks that it really has 40, which would mean at least 3 to 4 million tons of chrome, which is ranked first in Europe for its quality.

“The private companies could continue their work for other 50 years here, and the mine is rich from this point of view. It has been dug 540 meters under the sea level, and it could be exploited for 40 levels”, Kola declared.

In the territory of the ACR Company and the levels exploited by them, there are dozens of private companies whose miners work without any plan or security measures. Years ago, these levels have had accidents that resulted with lost lives. Experts say that the reason is that they work in difficult terrain and unsafe conditions.

Chrome, a history of abuses

The history of Bulqize mine might be one of the greatest failures of the Albanian state with the concessions, which has involved innocent victims, enormous profits and several corruptive affairs that go as high as the Albanian government.

In 2001, the Socialist government of the time approved the first concession of the Bulqize Mine, together with some other objects that were included in the chrome enrichment factory. 

The concession was given to an Italian company, DARFO. The Italians exploited for more than five years the reserves and stocks that were accumulated through the years, without making any investment. By the end of 2006, DARFO left and sold the concession to the Russian-Austrian group ACR.

The sale was supervised by then Minister of Economy, Genc Ruli, the man who negotiated the new concession agreement. According to the concession that was voted in the Parliament in 2007, ACR was obliged to invest 22 million EUR by the end of 2010, for renewing the technology and for improving safety conditions.

The new concession brought new hopes that the problems with the mine would end once and for all, and that the new investors would improve safety conditions and the mine efficiency. But history repeated itself. Lured by the high chrome prices during 2007 and 2008, the Company started the massive exploitation of the reserves that had been accumulated during the communist years, while they delayed the investments. Meanwhile, the miners were losing their lives, one after another, due to the lack of investments.

After exploiting it for three years, ACR had violated all investment plans as agreed in the contract. For this reason, on July 7th 2009, the company asked the Ministry of Energy to change the concession agreement. Only two days after, the former Minister Genc Ruli signed the amendment of the agreement, by postponing more than 13 million EUR of investments to the year 2013, when these investments should have already been completed.

Only three days before leaving his duty as Minister, Genc Ruli changed the agreement without having it passed by the Parliament, in full violation with the law.

After the scandal was published in Top-Channel, the Minister Ruli reacted by giving his own version of the facts, explaining that he had changed the agreement without passing it in Parliament because the MPs were in their summer-holidays. Several days after, the Prosecution started the investigations. The case still stays at the Prosecution offices, while the abuses with the mine continue.

After the elections of 2009, the Minister of Energy, Dritan Prifti tried to cancel the concession by calling the agreement officially broken.

But this initiative failed very soon. The threats and the accusations for removing the concession remained only on papers, and no legal step was taken for giving an end to the abuses with the mine.

The experts now say that the mine is risking to be destroyed, due to the exploitation without criteria and the lack of investments. This would be the tragic end of a story full of failures and corruption of hundreds of millions of dollars which involves from ordinary criminal bands to the highest rank officials of our country, persons who are abusing with one Albania’s richest treasures.

Albania is considered to be the fourth country in the world for its chrome reserves. 

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