And in a further shock announcement yesterday it was indicated the mine might have only 12 months operational life remaining.

This week the Swiss owned multi national company invited 30 applications for voluntary redundancies from its current workforce of 170.

It was believed that up to yesterday there had been possibly 17 acceptances.

The miners’ union, the United Mineworkers, has been in discussions with company representatives all week but believes there is little likelihood of a reprieve.

The union is hopeful, however, the State Government will allocate the coal lease to another company to extend the life of the mine.

Central to the issue is a ‘block’ of coal that sits partly beneath a swamp that environmentalists over several months have been claiming would be at risk from longwall mining.

But according to the union Xstrata is only interested in longwall operations rather than bord and pillar extraction.

And union district president Andy Honeysett said the company believes that the need for added protection for the swamp and technical problems with the roof would make the mining of this section unviable.

Mr Honeysett said there was 20 million tonnes of coal in the section in question.

He said State Member Gerard Martin had previously made representations to the then Minister Ian Macdonald for the lease approval.

After the Minister resigned in controversial circumstances the approval had come from the new Minister Tony Kelly.

The union was hopeful that the Minister would now approve granting the lease to another company prepared to mine the remaining coal by bord and pillar.

Mining union leader and Councillor Wayne McAndrew has been warning in Council for some months of the threat to Baal Bone from a campaign by environmental interests.

Xstrata was invited to comment but had not returned the Lithgow Mercury’s calls at the time of going to press yesterday.