A leading group has been set up in the city to rectify the closure of coal mines and two documents have been issued to implement the task of resolving the excess capacity to the closed mines, they are the Implementation Plan to Resolve Overcapacity of Coal Industry and the schedule for Eliminating Backward Production Capacity of the Coal Industry from 2016 to 2020. This year, the closed coal mines account for 60% of the city’s existing coal mines. Among them, the only 3 coal mines in Yiling District have all been closed down, so have 19, 16, 14, 6, 7, 3 and 4 coal mines respectively in Yuan’ an, Changyang, Dangyang, Zigui, Yidu, Xingshan and Wufeng.

 

　　While resolving the excess capacity of coal, the city government further strengthens the red line awareness of safe production by sticking to a strict safety market access system of coal mines, demanding more safety investment on coal mines and guiding more coal mines to close down early. At present, all the main adits, auxiliary adits and wind tunnels of the 72 coal mines have been closed down, their provision of electricity and explosive products has been stopped, with the equipments and facilities removed and the venues filled, and the resettlement of their employees has been planned. From this year, the approval of technical transformation projects for newly-added capacity will be fully stopped in the city within 3 years. And it is expected that by the end of "13th Five-Year" period, there will be only 11 coal mines left in Yichang, a reduction of 91% of the total in 2015, and their capacity will drop by more than 80%. (Reporter: Zhang Wei)