Energy, Estonia, Legislation

Around 460 people worked in the mine. More than a half of them will start working in the Estonia mine, around a hundred are in retirement age and a hundred have to find a new job.

Closing the Viru mine also means a loss of a mining technology since the technology from 1950s isn’t suitable for the 21st century.

Eest Energia's mining arm board member Erik Väli said that the reason for closing the mine were technical and economical: the mining area had expanded too much and geology had become so poor that there was no point in extracting the remaining 8 million tonnes of oil shale via the Viru mine, it is easier to do it via the Estonia mine.