Lost in a Coal Mine in Alabama

Perhaps the scariest adventure of my life occurred many years ago. It now seems like something out of a movie. But no, it happened in real life in the 1990s. I was working for Amoco in Tulsa, Oklahoma at the time. As a petroleum engineer, my area was coalbed methane which meant extracting gas from underground coalbeds, also called coal seams. Amoco was very good at producing gas from coals, and I was assigned in the R&D department to find out the best fracking procedure to get the gas from the coalbed to the well.

Down in the mine.

Unless you’re doing thought experiments like Einstein did to create his theory of general relativity, it’s always nice for a physicist to get some hands-on experience. In coalbed methane, that means looking closely at coal and maybe even touching it.

The best way to examine coal is by descending into a coal mine. After one conference in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, I signed up for a tour of an underground coal mine not far from the city. In mines like this, giant “shearers” are deployed in a tunnel to cut through a coal seam that may be only three feet thick.

As the cutters whine and whirl, large chunks of coal are cut loose. Some smaller fist-sized pieces are flung through the air like baseballs before crashing to ground – you don’t want to stand too close to a shearer! It’s like a monster from hell, down in a darkened mine where the multiple eyes of the shearer’s lights flicker as it crawls forward to crush everything in its path. And all this is punctuated by the thunder of roof rock collapsing behind the shearer and filling the tunnel.

The coal that is mined in Alabama is burned to melt iron into steel or to create electricity. Coal-burning power stations used to be ubiquitous across America, but in the 1990s they began to be replaced by gas-burning plants. Natural gas from coalbed methane wells was cheaper than coal then and it burns cleaner — it produces only half the greenhouse gases that burning coal does.

A group of ten conference attendees, protected by hard hats, rode an elevator down to the Blue Creek coal seam, at a depth of 1500-2000 feet. After walking a hundred yards along a damp tunnel, a guide from the coal company showed what the ragged coalface looks like up close, including the small fractures called cleats that were spaced less than an inch apart.

Coal mines are dangerous.

The kicker is the methane gas hidden in the coal. Special steps are taken to desorb the gas before mining the coal, since a small spark can explode and become a tunnel full of fire. Ventilation is used to dilute the gas and sweep it out of the mine.

In the 1970s, an idea emerged for drilling wells ahead of the mining trend, to suck natural gas out of the coal before the miners got there. That’s where the idea of selling coalbed methane started – somebody figured if you had a well sucking the methane out of a coal mine, you might as well sell the gas and make some pocket change.

While the guide was describing how the tunnels were built and reinforced, so we could feel perfectly safe while strolling along, there was a resounding crash, like when a garbage truck drops a large dumpster to the pavement. The guide looked around anxiously and pulled out his cellphone.

When a very strong wind started soon after the crash, my heart beat faster. Here we are in a coal mine more than 1500 feet underground, and the guide doesn’t know what’s crashed, and this fierce wind has sprung up out of nowhere. When some of the paltry lights flickered and went out, my body started shivering and I couldn’t stop it.

The guide got off the phone. “A ventilation wall has collapsed, stopping us from taking the usual route out of the mine. We have to take another route. Follow me.” I was certain we were lost, and that the guide didn’t know how to get us out of there. It was a panicky feeling.

How we got out of the mine.

The guide tried to sound cheerful, but the wind carried his cheerfulness away. Shortly we came to a metal wall, which completely blocked our path. The guide was quick to explain that a small hole in the metal wall was our exit. I looked up to see a square hole that was six feet above ground level and was only about two feet long and two feet wide!

“You must be kidding,” a young lady with red hair and a turned-up nose cried above the screeching sound of the wind funneling into the hole. “Surely there’s another tunnel we can take out.”

“Nope. This is it. No other exit. We gotta go through that hole.” He selected a tall thin man to be first. It took four other men to hoist up the thin man so that he went into the window feet-first, and on his stomach because he needed to land on his feet on the other side. He shimmied through the hole, holding on with both hands to the edge of the window, until his feet touched ground on the other side. Someone shoved his backpack through after him. He shouted back through the hole, “I’m ready. Send the next person through.”

The redhead was next, and the men lifted her torso so she could squeeze through the hole head first and tummy down. This was an unglamorous comedown as her body, slightly overweight, was pushed and shoved through the small metal hole by four husky males! She said her breasts hurt as the woman scraped against the edge of the iron. The thin man on the other side grasped her shoulders as she came through and supported her weight as he let her down carefully.

However, the wind which was strong in the tunnel converged to gale-force in the window because the redhead’s body reduced the flow area. Her glasses were ripped off her nose and thudded into dirt on the other side. Fortunately the dirt was soft, she told us, and the glasses didn’t break.

Confidence grew as the man-handlers refined their technique. The second woman suffered a deep scratch in her arm from the sharp edge of metal when she tried to catch her hard-hat as it was blown off by the gale.

They pushed me through head-first and tummy-down. I’m about 6 feet 1 inch, and as my legs were supported on the near side, somebody on the far side gave a sudden pull and the rough iron of the window tore a gash in my pants. I wasn’t happy about this, but at least it didn’t cause any bleeding.

Apart from these minor afflictions, all the party made it safely to the other side of the square hole where the wind speed was less, and we returned to the elevator, and the surface, safely.

Risks in coal and in life.

Flying back to Tulsa, I pondered this coalbed methane experience. The risk of a ventilation wall falling probably wouldn’t have been considered by the tour planners. When miners build a ventilation wall, they make sure it can withstand the highest winds and pressures that result from the ventilation system, right? But someone must have miscalculated.

And of course risk is a part of life. When you drive a car, you take a risk. Some folks seek to minimize risk, and that’s what defensive driving is about. But there are risk-takers who don’t drive defensively, and never intend to. They assume nothing bad will ever happen. I prefer to minimize risk.

In the oil-and-gas industry, there are risks everywhere. Any time we deal with oil or gas deposits thousands of feet below the surface means we’re trying to capture and bring up hot high-pressure fluids that prefer to remain in an uncontrolled state. Risk is one of the costs of doing business.

Coal mining deaths in China varied from 5,000 – 7,000 per year in the period 2002 – 2006. In 2002, nineteen miners died every day, on average, the worst year on record.

What became of the coal mine we got trapped in? The company that began as a small producer landed in the top 25 of metallurgical coal producers in the US. However, in the No. 5 coal mine in Brookwood, on 23 September 2001, methane gas was suddenly released by a cave-in and it exploded, killing 13 miners. In 2016, the company went bankrupt before reopening as Warrior Met Coal which again produced the metallurgical coal so perfect for blast furnaces that make steel.
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Its 90 degrees F here in Albuquerque, a record temperature for this day. The hottest March that anyone can remember. Feels like global warming to me.
With Fond Regards.
The Gray Nomad.
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Men know how to tear apart flinty rocks and how to overturn the roots of mountains. They drill tunnels in the rocks and lay bare precious stones…
But where does wisdom come from?
Where does understanding dwell?..
God understands the way to it
and he alone knows where it dwells,
for he views the ends of the earth
and sees everything under the heavens.
[Job, Chapter 28, probably written about 2,500 years ago].