Przyczyny przeklasyfikowywania zasobów przemysłowych wegla w kopalniach Górnoślaskiego Zagłebia Weglowego (GZW)

A transformation in government system and economy, connected with the introduction of free market economy, resulted in evident increase in management process effectiveness (including an increase in labour productivity). However, there are also some negative and unwanted side effects e.g. a remarkable decrease in hard coal resources. A decrease of over 23.655 billion t in geological reserves was noted throughout 1989-2006. In other words, for total coal production of 2.103 billion t at that period, the decrease was over 11 t of the reserves per each ton of the produced coal. The reasons for such decrease in all kinds of reserves or resources were not clearly reported or recorded in USCB. Therefore, an attempt was made to verify them retrospectively. The verification referred to industrial reserves in three coal beds of various mines basing on respective data from 1989-2003. The beds were taken for analysis from various geological or mining conditions, and the mines were different in amount or quality of coal. A decrease in the industrial reserves was usually a consequence of reclassification to "b" out-of-balance of group or cancellations in the records (most often for the same reason). In a majority of cases the reasons seem to be subjective, including no or difficult access to excavations and complicated tectonic disturbances. As no details were given about complicated tectonic disturbances (e.g. the magnitude of fault displacement, density of faulting etc.), it was unfortunately impossible to verify the decisions. The so-called other unfavourable mining or geological conditions had little connection with reclassification or cancellations. It is important to note that none of the reasons could be considered as "economic". Unfavourable features, resulting from geological and mining conditions, did not predominate among the reclassified plots.