Norway to shut its last Arctic coal mine in 2023

Norway will in 2023 shut its last coal mine in Svalbard, its operator said yesterday, drawing to a close more than a century of prospecting by Oslo in this Arctic archipelago.

Mine 7 will close in September 2023 after authorities in Longyearbyen, the archipelago's capital, terminated a contract to supply the local power plant, the Store Norske mining company announced.

The closure won't spell the end of all mining in this snow-drenched place north of the Arctic Circle, as a Russian company continues to extract coal there, keeping a strategic presence in the Arctic.

"The purpose of Mine 7 is to supply coal to the power plant in Longyearbyen. Now that the coal supply agreement has been terminated, there is no longer any reason to operate the mine," Store Norske's director Jan Morten Ertsaas said in a statement.