Damage from two deadly blasts that hit a west Siberian mine at the weekend, killing at least 60 people, could reach 5.7 billion rubles ($188 mln), the regional governor said on Wednesday.
At least 99 people were also injured and 30 are still missing after two explosions at the Raspadskaya coalmine, near the town of Mezhdurechensk in the Kemerovo Region, over the weekend.
Aman Tuleyev said it would take about twelve months to reconstruct the mine, adding that about 5 billion rubles ($165 million) was required to rebuild the underground part of the coalmine and some 700 million rubles ($23 million) to reconstruct structures above the ground.
"The coalmine cannot be reconstructed at once. It will take about a year. The rationale is that it must be reconstructed part-by-part. The least-damaged part has to be reconstructed first and then the remaining parts will be rebuilt," Tuleyev said.
The governor also said Raspadskaya produced every fifth metric ton of coking coal for the Russian steel industry.
Russian business daily Vedomosti reported on Wednesday that the Raspadskaya Coal Company and its shareholders will have pay a high price for the deadly explosions at the Raspadskaya coalmine.
On Tuesday, the first day of trading on the Russian stock market after the Victory Day celebrations, the company's market capitalization plunged $889 million while reconstruction efforts could take years and cost hundreds of millions of U.S. dollars, the paper said.
A top manager of a Russian coal company told Vedomosti that expenses could hit $600-700 million if the coalmine had to be rebuilt anew. The repair of equipment and the partial reconstruction of the infrastructure could cost $150-200 million. However, expenses will increase considerably, if the coalmine has to be flooded, the manager said.
If the coal company stands idle until the end of the year and the Raspadskaya Coal Company does not build up output at other coalmines, its revenues may plummet 40% this year from $1 billion projected before the explosions to $500-600 million, Boris Krasnozhyonov, an analyst with Renaissance Capital, told Vedomosti.
The coalmine's idleness will take a much larger toll on the company's EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) and net profit, which could plummet 62% (from $700 million to $273 million) and 88% (from $388 million to $50 million), respectively.
Not surprisingly, investors tried to get rid of Raspadskaya shares on Tuesday, which shed 26.5% of their value in the Russian Trading System (RTS) stock exchange while the company's capitalization plunged from $4.249 billion to $3.36 billion, the paper said.
MEZHDURECHENSK (Kemerovo region), May 12 (RIA Novosti)
