MOSCOW, May 25 (RIA Novosti) - Evraz Group has reached an agreement to buy 50% in Yuzhkuzbassugol, the owner of a West Siberian mine where an explosion claimed 38 lives Thursday, from three legal entities, a Evraz spokesman said Friday.
The explosion at the Yubileinaya mine in the Kemerovo Region occurred at 7:40 a.m. Moscow time (3:40 a.m. GMT), when 217 miners were working underground. The accident comes on the heels of another powerful methane blast at a neighboring mine, owned by the same company, on March 19, in which 110 miners died.
"Evraz will buy 50% in Yuzhkuzbassugol from the company's management," the source said, adding that the steel and mining group already holds a 50% stake in Yuzhkuzbassugol.
Earlier reports said Aman Tuleyev, governor of the Kemerovo Region, planned to push the owners of the 50% stake in Yuzhkuzbass to sell their shares to Evraz and to ask the steel giant to replace the company's managers. The governor also threatened to consider revoking Yuzhkuzbassugol's license otherwise.
All the bodies of the dead miners, which were lifted out of the mine Thursday, have now been identified. Their age ranged between 18 to 55.
