Employment, Energy, Estonia, Good for Business

"We are weighing the possibility of in the future building a pumped-storage hydroelectricity facility on the territory of the current Estonia mine. We see that the pump hydro would help the Estonian electricity system offer frequency products when desynchronizing from the Russian joint electricity system," Veljo Aleksandrov, project director at Eesti Energia, told BNS.

While minable oil shale in the Estonia mine will last for approximately ten years, then the project of the pumped-storage hydroelectricity plant project will be possible only in the distant future. "The project is only in the research phase and we can talk about the possible construction of the plant in the middle of the next decade at the earliest. We could only start building after we have carried out the research, analyses and planning necessary in the project," Aleksandrov added.

The Estonia mine located in East-Viru County is the world's largest oil shale mine, with the general area of the mining claim totaling 141 square kilometers. This is comparable to the size of the city of Tallinn. The mine in 2016 produced altogether 8.2 million tons of oil shale, making up approximately 62% of the oil shale production of Enefit Kaevandused, a mining subsidiary of Eesti Energia. Altogether 1,300 people work at the Estonia mine.