ucg suitable for pike river mine nz?

Sorry, I meant UCG, not CSG, in the subject line.

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I listened to the CEO of the deadly Pike River NZ, coal mine, Peter Whittal, answering questions at a press conference today. One of the them concerned the future of the mine. Whittal said the mine does have a future, that he has people ready and willing to go back down there and that he himself would be prepared to go back down there and work. (This of course will only be after the cause of the explosions has been fully investigated.) I gather it's a relatively new mine. Whittal referred to 50 million tons of coal still to be mined.

A question that occurs to me is that if they thought the mine was acceptably safe to send men into before, but unfortunately something unpredictable has happened, then how can they ever be sure that such an event will never occur again? Logically, at least, they cannot. Moreover, the same presumably applies to every underground coal mine on earth.

Looking at the mountainous (and pristinely beautiful) terrain in which the mine is located causes me (and I daresay also a few of you cxy holders reading this) to ask: what chance UCG to extract the energy from the 50MT of coal remaining there at Pike River? Frankly, I don't know whether ucg is compatible with the situation there but it does seem an appropriate question to ask at this tragic moment in time.